


when your stitch comes loose

by devils_trap



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 5
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - No Cult, Anonymous Sex, Blasphemy, Car Sex, Dirty Talk, Exhibitionism, Flagrant grossness in a poor innocent Home Depot, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Home Improvement, Intercrural Sex, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Oral Sex, Phone Sex, Public Masturbation, Recreational Drug Use, Size Kink, Understall, Unsafe Sex, background john/m!dep but it's minor, bitchy brat staci pratt™ is my one and only true love, in that staci pratt has agreed to help his mom with DECK REPAIR, light humiliation kink, lmao I'm sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-08
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-06-23 18:37:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15612462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devils_trap/pseuds/devils_trap
Summary: He doesn't get to write the reply text message, too distracted by the tan boot cocked to the side, right into Staci's cubicle. Staci's not gay, a handful of lackluster inebriated encounters have told him as much, but he's gotten drunk enough times and delved down enough gay porn rabbitholes to know what that extended foot offers. Understall, anonymous.





	1. Chapter 1

He never should've agreed to help his mother restore her back deck, but here he is, in the middle of a Home fucking Depot on his one day off this week looking at wood stain. By himself, his mother “too busy” to accompany him on the forty-five minute drive from the middle of Holland Valley where his dinky little apartment is, to Polson, a spit of a town barely bigger than Hope County, but hey! At least it's got a Chili's and a fucking Home Depot.

As if he had nothing better to do. He'd had plans to do laundry, maybe longingly stare at the glass bowl he hasn't sparked up since he signed up for the Academy. Probably watch some risky porn and beat off, all within the comfort of his ridiculously large bed.

Instead he's shifting from foot to foot in front of a veritable wall of liquid stain, wishing his mother had been more specific when she'd told him to just “get a nice shade of brown.”

They're _all_ fucking brown, and to be honest he doesn't know what designates a “nice” shade of brown from a “shitty” shade of brown, since they're all, y'know, brown. “Pecan” and “natural cedar”, “redwood” and “cedar naturaltone” (and what in the good God damn does _that_ mean?) and “new bark”—all fucking brown.

Brown. Marrón. Brun. Braun. Castanho. Parauri.

Brown.

There's a can of tan stain in each row, sometimes the fourth in, sometimes the sixth, Behr and Olympic and other brand names that kind just blur together in the sea of bland brownness, but tan's just a watered down what?

Fucking brown _._

Shades of brown in various saturations, like the good people at Behr stood around multiple vats of brown, viscous liquid and decided the best way to swindle the common man was to add more or less water to a formula to dilute or enhance the shade. Slap a new name on it and boom! Charge three extra dollars for “semi-transparent” redwood versus “transparent” redwood.

His mother's house is cute and small, the very same one she's lived in all of his life. She's been restoring it slowly over the last decade or so, updating the kitchen one year and ripping up the carpets to reveal beautiful hardwood original flooring the next. Just recently, she had someone in town come out to fix up the one, single solitary full bath, so now instead of an outdated, claustrophobic piece of shit crackerjack box, it's a _polished, refined_ claustrophobic crackerjack box, piece of shit no longer included.

Lots of good memories stuffed into that place. In the notched doorframe in the kitchen, tiny curlicue handwriting showcases his height progression up until he turned fourteen and snapped at his mother to stop, forever immortalizing him at 5'9” and not the 6' he'd finally tap out at in junior year.

In the attic, where all of his childhood toys sit in boxes collecting dust beside even older boxes of hand-me-down clothes his mother couldn't part with, like Staci's 90's windbreakers and the wedding dress she'd bought from the Goodwill and never even got to wear. Weird, clunky Rescue Heroes that he used to throw off the roof while he acted out their heroics, half-naked G.I. Joes and Barbies illicitly snatched from his same-age cousin, the ones he used to act out depraved soap-opera-esque relationships with in the corner of his room, back to the bedroom door so no one could see Barbie getting railed by her on-again-off-again mob boss fiance. Stuffed into the very same box alongside a ratty, falling apart Woody doll and his clunky, plastic Buzz Lightyear counterpart, the very same ones his shit for brains father gave him before he walked out of their lives for good.

Getting his first handjob at the kitchen table— _the same fucking one she still has_ , the same one he still has dinner with her at at least once a week—Elizabeth Browne (fucking ironic, he knows) with her clumpy, heavy-handed mascara and fiery red braids and her damp, tight hold on his dick, steadily tugging and rubbing until he shot all over the underside of the table while she shakily went over their tenth grade chemistry assignment.

Even birthed him in the living room in a blue and white inflatable pool, the camcorder in his father's anxious hand wobbling unsteadily, distorting the home movie like there'd been an earthquake the entire time. Her wails and Staci's cries as he entered the world muffled by his loud, erratic breathing, _Oh God, baby, oh God_.

Lots of good memories, and though the deck was never his _favorite_ place—unfinished and unsealed, that God damn thing had been the bane of his existence in high school. Barefoot in the dark trying to sneak across its face to get to its shadowy corner and smoke a blunt in peace, only to get a massive fucking splinter in his foot. Bouncing around on his remaining good foot, blunt still smoking between his clenched lips, burning his eyes. Trying to decide if it's worth it to keep smoking and hope he can properly remove that shit himself once all the incriminating evidence is gone, or if he needs to stub it out and quickly take a shower, then cook up some stupid plan to get him noticeably outside on the deck, then splintered, all so his mother can deftly remove it for him—it still deserves a professional touch.

Staci Pratt is plenty professional...just not where this shit is concerned. He's good police, he's a good helicopter pilot, he's absolutely fucking crushing it with his warlock in _Destiny 2_ —which decidedly may or may _not_ be professional, it's certainly lucrative and professional for some, but he's still good at it.

Deck restoration and staining? Not so much. Wishes she would hire someone with the skills for that, not puppy-dog eye her only son into “seeing what he can do.”

“All I see is fucking _brown_ ,” Staci hisses to himself, mindful to keep his voice down with the other patrons wandering around the warehouse. There's no one else in the aisle, but open spaces like this echo and the last thing he wants is more judgey eyes cutting his way. He's already been standing here like an idiot for half an hour, agonizing over what constitutes a “nice shade”, willing God to either impart just this smidgen of wisdom or smite him here and now, because so help him _God_ if he has to drive back and exchange his purchase for a “nicer” shade. Looking like a fucking idiot, can't even buy wood stain right.

With itchy, restless fingers, Staci tugs on the collar of his black and green flannel with one hand to encourage air to hit his sweaty throat, and squeezes hard on the empty plastic remnants of his ill-advised massive blue slushie with the other. Stopped at the rundown old 7-11 between his apartment and the highway before he set off, and made a beeline for the slushie machines. Humming at him as they churned and swirled their brightly colored frozen sugar water, cherry red and blue raspberry blue and that weird sugarfree, neon yellow banana-mango that Staci's literally never seen anyone order, and he's out here buying one of these damn things often enough that he's got the 7-11 app on his phone.

Picking a color then had been easy, as it always is.

Quietly fuming, Staci begins shifting from foot to foot. The movement feels like it sloshes the liquid in his stomach, unobstructed in its journey as Staci had foolishly postponed lunch because, surely, this couldn't take that long, right?

Ugh, he's gotta pee.

He hopes the walk to the bathroom and back clears his head enough to just fucking decide, like emptying his bladder is a soft reboot or something.

Have you tried turning it off an on?

Have you tried removing the twentysomething dumbass from the aisle of wood stains, shooing him off to the bathroom, and then letting him return in hopes he'll have a nervous breakdown, close his eyes, and just grab whichever can his hand lays on? Bonus points if in his blind groping the entire display collapses on him, not only ensuring that his choice cannot be wrong, but that he never ever has to do this again.

The heel of his boots squeaks on the cement floor as he pivots around, back to the stupid stains, and heads off in search of the nearest bathroom. Asking an associate would probably be the easiest and fastest way, but that's just another little defeat to tally against him for the day. Staci would rather walk around this maze—emasculating in its hypermasculinity, too many choices too many options, there's no way anyone out there knows all of this shit—until he pisses himself than ask for directions.

And that's what he nearly does, bobbing and weaving down the massive open corridors until finally, blessedly, he stumbles upon the hole in the wall with the absolute dinkiest RESTROOM sign hanging above its archway. He's practically dancing he has to piss so bad, and in his haste to get in the men's room he nearly bodychecks a fourteen-year-old boy dragging his heels. His face morphs from dire boredom to pissy teenage wrath as he stumbles back from Staci's path, but the expression is quickly forgotten as Staci skirts past him and towards the urinals.

Which are taped off with yellow CAUTION tape.

_We're sorry for the inconvenience. Please use the stalls while we address the situation._

Beneath it in messy scrawl: _TELL THE BASTARD SH*TTING IN THE URINALS TO F*CKING DIE_

The sign looks aged, crinkled and messed with, so either the asterisks on the vowels or sheer human laziness kept it from being ripped down. Maybe there's another, nicer bathroom in this stupid place not in fucking Narnia, and this one's broken urinals and profane sign have just been forgotten due to disuse.

Against the far wall are five stalls, four small and one handicap. The third stall, one of the smaller stalls right in the middle, is roped off like the urinals. With gritting teeth, Staci discovers the handicap stall _should_ be roped off. Maybe cleansed with fire? Irritation rising, Staci scopes out the remaining stalls, discards the fourth stall between CAUTION taped and SHOULD BE CAUTION taped, and picks one at random, not caring anymore as long as he can relieve himself.

It's dark in his tiny little stall. Scuffed, close-set metal walls boxing him in, and a dead fluorescent strip of lighting above. At least it's mostly clean, even if the floor shines damply in the light lamely shining down from the next stall over's cheap, flickering lighting.

He won't be in here very long, anyway. It's fine, it's all fucking fine.

He locks the door behind him and sets his empty plastic cup on the low-sitting toilet paper dispenser, not sure why he didn't just throw it into the trash upon entering the bathroom. Obviously his brain's a little fried, fumes from the unopened wood stains giving him a contact high or something.

It takes him a moment to open his big as shit belt buckle to get to the button clasp of his jeans. The edge of his buckle smacks the dispenser, has it rattling ominously, and seriously, could this piece of shit Narnia bathroom fall apart after he's finished pissing out all 40 ounces of blue liquid diabetes?

Luckily the dispenser stays right where it is, and Staci has no further trials and tribulations to face before he's able to relieve himself.

Midstream, someone pads their way into the bathroom, scoffing in what Staci assumes is disgust over the current state of things. Stranger pauses, seems to assess the row of stalls the way Staci had, and chooses the stall right beside Staci. He can't blame the guy, even if he hates having someone on the other side of his stall. Will go out of his way to avoid it, usually, but when faced with the same choices Scoffing Stranger has, he'd probably make the very same decisions.

He's trying to zip up his fly when his cellphone in his pocket begins to buzz. He wriggles away from the vibrations until he's fully situated in his jeans, then retrieves the culprit from its confines.

 **Mom 1:13PM**  
Hows things giong?

 **Mom 1:13PM**  
gong

 **Mom 1:14PM**  
GOING

Holding the phone in front of him, willing his mother to just accept the typo and move on lest the frequent vibrations cause him to—almost drop the phone in the toilet. He has a near heart attack scrabbling to catch it, the corner of the damn thing even bouncing in the center of his palm at one point.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he whines, while Scoffing Stranger huffs, amused, at him from beyond their metal partition.

Scoffing Stranger, Huffing Who's There, all Staci can see of the guy are his tan combat boots and the bottom hem of his jeans. Whoever he is, he can shut the fuck up.

It's gross, Staci's yelling at himself in his head even while he does it, but he sits down on the toilet seat after a quick brush off with a wad of toilet paper. Firmly grasps his phone and opens a blank message to send to his mother.

 **Staci 1:15PM  
** they're ALL BROWN, mom. that's how it's going.

He's waiting for a reply when Nebulous Neighbor flushes the toilet and lingers. He could be texting, too, albeit much more gracefully than Staci. Could be doing anything.

 **Mom 1:16PM  
** Just pick a nice one! One ou think I'll like

 **Mom 1:16PM  
** Y O U

Booted Bathroom Brother sits down. Too busy to think about what the hell that guy is doing, Staci furiously taps away at the glass. Writes out a scathing, pissy message before he erases it. His mother means well, but sometimes it just doesn't compute. She asks him to do stuff he'd really, really rather not, he gives in because he loves his mom and is easily cajoled into stuff. He doesn't say no, doesn't decline, and ends up bitter and miffed at her and himself, when a simple “no thank you” or “I can't, sorry” would easily get her off his back.

He doesn't get to write the reply text message, too distracted by the tan boot cocked to the side, right into Staci's cubicle. Staci's not gay, a handful of lackluster inebriated encounters have told him as much, but he's gotten drunk enough times and delved down enough gay porn rabbitholes to know what that extended foot offers. Understall, anonymous. Usually just mutual masturbation, oral if you're ballsy, but he's seen some twinks contort enough to get dicked down, both participants still mostly in their separate stalls.

Not gay, but he can feel his blood pressure rising. Fights to suck in a mouthful of air as quietly and passively as he can, cringing as it sounds deafening in his own ears. Reverberating off the metal wall, bouncing back to smack another jagged sound out of him.

Not gay, but when he cottons on to the telltale raspy sounds already coming from his neighbor, his cheeks heat and his gut twists and without his conscious say so, his dick begins to stiffen.

He's not doing this, he's not doing this—

Tan Boot's quiet, punched out exhale has his brain shortcircuiting. Fucking hard reboot, running on a primal sort of autopilot, Staci's got no control over his foot as he turns his boot out to match, knocking their toes together. After a moment of silence, one of the longest heartbeats of Staci's fucking life, Soon to be Understall Buddy shifts from sitting on the toilet seat to kneeling on the floor, crotch framed in the spacious gap between the stall wall and the ground. Hardening cut cock still actively being stripped by a giant, scarred hand.

God, Tan Boot is a ginger. Thatch of bright red at the base of his cock, wiry and masculine.

Staci's always liked gingers.

Women. Female gingers. Not - not this. His body's just...confused.

Ginger Stranger extends his other hand beneath the wall, palm flat and open in offering. Staci swallows hard when those long, thick fingers begin to curl tauntingly at him, beckoning him over like they're playing Red Rover or some shit.

He focuses on those battered knuckles, white scars crisscrossing the skin like fucked up confetti, gifts from traumas past with no return receipt, as he shakily gets to his knees as Tan Boot had, leaving his phone on top of the dispenser beneath his empty cup. Pointedly does not think about the dampness seeping into the knees of his jeans, not about its origins, not about whether or not some other desperate asshole got onto his knees and touched a stranger's dick and let them touch his own.

His hands are shaking he's so flush with adrenaline, and it takes a little bit of struggling to get his belt buckle undone again. The heat in his cheeks flares hotter when his partner laughs at him, listening to him struggle, but he respectfully shuts up when Staci frees himself with a triumphant little sound, cockhead eagerly poking out of the slit of his boxers before he's even got a hold on himself.

Dick harder than it has any right to be, gotta be the adrenaline.

Red scoots closer to him and Staci follows suit, this time focusing on the way his muscled thighs flatten out, bulging attractively, and not the inherent danger Staci Pratt is willingly bulldozing into.

This is stupid, this is so God damn risky—what's he gonna do if someone walks in? Get kicked out of Home Depot? _Arrested_? Fucking Christ, he'd never be able to face his mother again, or the Sheriff. He'd have to leave Hope County, tail tucked between his legs all for some legitimate Strange in a God damn rundown Home Depot bathroom in Polson.

He watches a pearl of precome bead up and out of the head of Red's cock, and stupidly throws caution to the wind. He's so God damn miserably hard, and Red hasn't even touched him yet. Just seeing that impressive cock hot and hard before his own has his engines embarrassingly revved.

“Shy?” Red cajoles, laughter heavy in his low voice. The skin of the hand not still lazily jerking himself off is dry and hot against the shaft of Staci's dick as he reaches across the space between them and firmly takes Staci in his grip. Hot like burning, he makes a hissing sound through his teeth as he mindlessly raises his hips into Red's tight fist, and practically melts against the metal wall when he starts pumping, its surface a cool balm against his heat ravaged cheeks.

He makes a displeased sound when Red takes his hand away, and Red answers him with another low, chuffing laugh. He's always liked a little mocking with his pleasure, a little bitter with his sweet, and this right here right now is doing so much for him this is gonna be over embarrassingly quick. Needing to ensure he's not the only one soaring towards orgasm, needing Red to just fucking touch him again, Staci blindly gropes beneath the partition for Red's own cock. The bracelets on his wrist smart against his wristbone as they smack into the wall when he starts to jerk Red off, _clink clink clink clink_ , but he'll endure the sting and the damning tinkling of plastic against metal if he gets to hear Red rumble a groan again. It feels like it vibrates through the wall, like it goes straight into Staci's bloodstream.

Red spits into his hand, and soon after he's touching Staci again. There's more glide this time, the pleasure that much brighter and fuller as Staci listens to Red wetly jerk his cock.

Another sound, high in Staci's throat, tingling on his lips as it leaves him. He pushes his face into his own shoulder and bites at his flannel, tasting his own fabric softener as he pulls it into his mouth in hopes of muffling some of his sounds. Always been vocal, but the anonymity and the risk of this is singeing him alive.

Makes sure to not obstruct his view too badly, wants to muffle himself not blind himself to the show. Likes the way Red's saliva and his own precome glisten in the dim, the blur of their fists moving just out of sync. Red's cock is not only longer than his but thicker, and while comfortable in his own endowment, comparing himself to a piece like that quickly, inevitably leads to him thinking of taking it in his mouth, maybe his ass. Would it even fit? He's familiar with a single finger, _maybe_ two up his ass when getting head, but something like that? Jesus.

He'd—he'd try. Possibly. Feels his balls pull up at just the thought, feels his saliva dampening his shirt as he desperately tries to suppress the sound building in his throat. Water in a dam that won't hold, but he's trying, has to fucking try.

God, not gay, not gay, not gay.

Staci screws his eyes shut for but a moment before opening them again.

Not gay, but a show's a show. A fist's a fist, and Red works his expertly.

Staci leans his upper body back to get a better line of sight, flannel still securely in his mouth. Holds himself awkwardly even while his back protests so he can see more of Red. His scars trek all the way up his freckled forearms, splotchy and dark in some places, shiny and lividly red in others. Glossy, almost reflective. Burns of some sort, more fucked up scars like the ones on his knuckles. Upon closer inspection, he's got other strange scars on the tops of his hands, but his fist is curled too much and moving too fast for Staci to really get a good look.

That, and he's pretty sure he's gonna come soon.

“Don't gotta be silent, Peaches, s'only the two of us in here. Lemme hear you, huh? Can feel how much you want it, God you're practically dripping.”

Even around the flannel, his _uh huh_ is easily heard.

“There y'go, let it out. Wanna hear you, knew you'd make some pretty sounds. Bet they'd be even prettier with you on my dick, huh? Split you open. Make you take it.”

From somewhere above his head, his phone vibrates.

“That your girlfriend? Your wife? Wondering what's taking so long in the john, huh? Gonna have to go face the music feelin' my hands on you.” Hands, plural. Red's other hand cupping his balls, tugging gently with his fingers while his thumb swirls along the seam soothingly. Press of his thumbnail at random, unpredictable intervals, punching the breath right out of Staci's lungs. “Tell 'er it's just hot in here, you're fine. Not like you didn't just come all over the floor right before going out to see 'er.”

It's probably his _mom_ texting again, wondering what's taking him so long. He drops the wet flannel from his mouth, not even bothering to stifle the wounded sound that leaves him when Red tightly works his palm over Staci's cockhead and presses two fingers against his taint at the same time.

His tiny, Catholic mother, just hoping Staci chooses a nice shade of brown for her deck.

“Oh. Oh, fuck,” Staci whispers, shifting restlessly on his knees. His booted feet tingle from being sat on like this, tucked beneath his body on such an unforgiving floor, and his arm is starting to hurt from the weird angle, but he won't stop until they both come. He's too far gone to apply any sort of emergency break, no way out of this with his sanity in tact.

“There you go, Peaches,” Red sighs happily. From somewhere behind him, there's the squeak of rubber against tile, probably those fucking tan fatigue boots. Shifting around to get better leverage. The cut lines of Red's groin and lower abdomen bump against the partition as he thrusts into Staci's fist. “Gonna come for me?”

Moaning his affirmative. Clutching desperately at the bottom of the metal wall, fingers aching with the force of his grip. He swears he hears the wall protest the pressure as he curls in on himself and comes, hips jerking in Red's fist. Shooting everywhere, God. On Red's wrist, on the underside of the dispenser, on the shiny, damp floor.

Red's still tugging at him, even with his semen beginning to _sliiiide_ off the dispenser, even with his hips raggedly, achingly thrusting, even with the huffing, almost panting grunts leaving him unconsciously. Hasn't even seen Red's face, couldn't pick anything but his dick and boots out of a lineup, but he _knows_ that asshole is grinning. Pink lip caught between probably huge teeth, turned on by the intensity of his randomly chosen's partner's orgasm.

“Move closer,” Red commands, and Staci does. Shimmies as far forward as he can without entirely blocking his view, and cranes his neck unnaturally to watch Red's cockhead repeated pop out of the circle of Staci's fist. Bracelets no longer hitting the wall, but still clinking together with the force of his thrusts.

Before he comes, Red wraps his hand around Staci's, squeezes once, and angles his cock so he shoots on Staci's softened dick. His cheeks flare again, his head light with all of the blood and heat flooding his face so suddenly, as he watches rope after rope of Red's release cover him. He's not gonna be able to clean this up entirely, gonna have to checkout and drive home with this stranger's semen tacky in his lap. Clumping in his pubes.

Staci's dick twitches valiantly.

Much faster than Staci, Red is climbing to his feet and righting himself. He can hear the loud _znk! o_ f Red's zipper being done, the gentle clicking of a belt being opened, secured, and closed. All the while Staci's still on his sleeping legs.

“Gotta get up and mosey, Peaches. Someone's gotta be lookin' for you,” Red tells him. Gingerly he knocks the tip of his fatigue boot against Staci's knee, still damp, still extended beneath the stall wall. “Unless you're gonna sit there and let every son'bitch in this shithole come all over you? Mm, bet that'd be a pretty picture, Peaches.”

Spurred into motion now that blood is circulating through all of his body, not just his cheeks and his dick, Staci climbs onto the toilet seat on wobbly, tingling legs and mops at his crotch with another wad of toilet paper. There's semen in his pubes, beneath his balls, even on the fly of his jeans. He gets most of it up, but it'll be uncomfortably sticky until he can get some soap and water.

Can't exactly wash his crotch in the men's room bathroom, but he's never tried before. Maybe he could pull up his pants, rush out, wet and soap some paper towels, and return to his cubicle before anyone else pops in? Otherwise he has to wait until he gets home, and home is a forty-five minute drive away on a good day, and he hasn't even fucking bought the stain yet.

God. Fuck. The stain.

Staci huffs and mumbles to himself, calling it quits on his clean-up job. Almost doesn't hear the door sigh open and shut. He holds his breath, wondering if another person's entered—God, it still stinks like come in here—or if Red's already left.

Holds his breath and hears nothing else, no one else's breathing, no quietly padding boots. No rumbling, low voice. Red's gone.

He doesn't think about the heaviness in his stomach as he pockets his phone and heads to the sink. Throws his damnable slushie cup in the overfull trashcan. Doesn't dwell on the wetness on the knees of his jeans, or how the patch of his flannel he'd used to muffle himself sits damply over his collarbone, risen and wrinkled. Staci doesn't think of much, just focuses on rubbing soap into the skin of his hands, idly trying to smooth out the lines of irritation left in his wrist and forearm from the lip of the wall.

-

Back in the stains section, Staci stares at them dumbly for nearly five minutes before deciding this isn't important enough for him to continue dwelling on. With a quiet “fuck it”, Staci snatches the nearest can to his right hand off the display and marches his happy ass to the self checkout near the exit he parked outside of.

There's a young woman standing between the self checkout and the exit. Rocking back and forth, hands clasped behind her back. She's pretty, even with her strawberry blonde hair falling from the messy bun at the top of her head and exhaustion bruises deep and dark beneath her eyes. No make-up on, and her outfit is loose, casual, comfortable. Something she probably wouldn't mind getting paint or sawdust on.

Probably would mind semen, though.

Staci shakes his legs, wriggles his hips in attempt to dislodge his sticky sac from the seat of his boxers, and continues through his transaction.

Seeing the paint in his hands, the woman steps forward. There's no one else around to occupy her and she looks bored beyond tears. He returns her perky, customer service smile with something decidedly less bright and shiny, wattage dim like the piss pour lights in the bathroom. Out of politeness more than any real desire to interact with her, but his smile seems to beckon her over.

Green light. The toe of her well broken in sneakers pointed under the stall wall, into his cubicle.

“Hi! You find the right color for your project?” she asks. Her nametag says RACHEL in bubble letters, the A replaced with a cute little heart.

A tired, broken little laugh crackles against his lips. Spills all over the floor, and soon he can't stop laughing. She joins in after a heartbeat, looking a little concerned to have a flush, disheveled man cackling like a hyena before her, but uncertain how else to deal with it. He's probably scaring her, with his wet knees and flushed cheeks and his hair curling wetly with sweat around his ears. Rumpled, like he's up to something, though he doubts she'd readily guess what.

God, he wouldn't have guessed what half an hour ago.

“Yeah. Yeah, it's fuckin' brown alright. Just what I was looking for,” Staci agrees, jamming his debit card chip-first into the reader with both chagrin and gusto.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ever just...really write some suspect shit in hopes your muse comes back? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ hoping to kickstart my shit, finish this, wrap up f/g and do some more j/s
> 
> my friends are horrible, horrible enablers and i love them dearly ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
> 
> title as usual from a song, "hold me tight or don't" by fob.


	2. Chapter 2

When Staci arrives at his mother's house roughly an hour later, deck stain in a plastic bag in the passenger's seat and all thoughts of Red carefully tucked away in the far recesses of his mind, all of the lights are off and her Ford Taurus is no longer in the driveway. She'd said she had errands to run—probably had to pay bills, running from place to place to put down credit card payments or money on her cell phone bill, even though Staci's tried more than once to show her the wonders of online payment options—but he'd kind of hoped she'd be done before he was.

Mostly so he could unload the stain on her and spend the rest of his day off doing stuff he actually wanted to do.

No longer needed to jack off, at least, though he _does_ have to shower again.

His cheeks flare hotly as he snags the handles of the bag to his right, letting the plastic cut into his fingers. He dumbly tells himself that he's flush because it's hot, trying to explain away the prickly warmth without thinking of pink scars and huge hands. Pointedly does not think about the fact that today's high was only said to be 65°, and that his A.C. had been on up until just now when he cut the engine.

Instead of using the recently refinished cement walkway paved through the front lawn, Staci mulishly steps through grass he himself recently mowed, stomping his feet like a child. He'd foolishly thought that living in an apartment would spare him from things like _lawn care—_ and in a way it does. It keeps him from having to mow his own lawn, but all bets are off when it comes to his mother's. Coiled tight around her pinkie finger, unable to say “no” or distance himself from the only person who'd ever stuck by him entirely. Even when he was difficult, even when he rebelled and was generally a huge pain in the ass, she was calm and steady and loved him wholeheartedly. Cutting the grass every so often is nothing, a small token of his thanks.

At her front door, he fiddles with his key ring, automatically going for the brass key looped right after the one unlocking his own front door. It's dark inside the living room, the curtains drawn, but he's so familiar with the layout of the house that he doesn't bother flipping on a light until he's crossed through the living room and into the kitchen. Flips on the lightswitch with his elbow and deposits the bagged stain on the kitchen table before heading to her fridge. Snatches the jug of orange juice from its spot on the first shelf like he always does, ready to drink straight from the source even when his mother screeches at him to use a glass, that she raised him in a _home_ _a_ nd not a _barn_.

He's got the jug halfway to his mouth when the screeching in his head changes from his mother's voice to his own slightly frantic inner monologue. Yelling at himself to use a glass, that even though he might not've blown Red that he's still done something Dirty and Wrong and he needs to keep his mother far, far away from all that entails.

He puts the jug back in the fridge instead of grabbing a glass, even tidily rearranges the tupperware and sour cream he'd disturbed fishing the juice out. Washes his hands with the water entirely too hot and then leaves.

-

He jerks off again later that night, a little drunker than he had originally intended. The laptop on his bed has a heterosexual amateur porno going with its volume cut low, and he does not think about how he'd vetoed video after video until he found one with a man whose strawberry blonde hair had enough strawberry in it to make his nuts ache. Focuses instead on the cries of the woman getting railed on her back, how the saliva wet around her beaded dusky brown nipples shines in the light, how wet she looks with his cock driving into her cunt over and over.

The scene shifts, and he can no longer see the woman's face. Ass in the air and face pushed into the mattress, brown wavy hair haloed around her, all Staci can see is strawberry blonde carefully easing himself into her asshole bare. The angle even keeps him from seeing her pussy at all, all he can see is a presumably Latin brunet individual getting their ass fucked by an almost red head.

He should pause it. He should close right the fuck out of the window and find a lesbian porno that doesn't drive him nuts—it's their God damn _nails_ half the time, he can't imagine those feel good on his back let alone inside of him.

Instead he watches the anal scene over and over. Mutes it so he no longer has to hear strawberry blonde's too nasally voice, or the breathy, distinctly feminine moaning coming from his partner.

Imagines it's _his_ Red, with his true red hair and his scars and fat cock and that rolling, mocking laugh. Imagines it's himself getting plowed, thrusting back to sink Red further into his body. Shoots hard like he did back in that bathroom and stares at the ceiling as the blades churning above him begin to cool the semen splashed on his chest, dotted on his throat, dripping from his fingers, the video still playing on mute in the background.

-

No matter what he does over the next few days, thoughts of the Home Depot bathroom won't leave him the fuck alone.

Nancy, the dispatch operator at the Station, brings in a wicker basket full of peaches, brought up from her daughter's long as hell cross country drive to Montana from South Carolina. Ripe and fragrant, he can smell them as soon as she's walked through the door. Makes his mouth water, makes his head ring.

_There you go, Peaches. Gonna come for me?_

She hands one out to each of the three people in the room—Staci, the Junior Deputy McKenna, and the Sheriff himself—each with a different cutesy, fruit-themed remark. She gets to Staci and doesn't seem to notice all the blood's left his face.

“A peach for my peach!” she crows, fruit thrust towards him.

“Uh,” he croaks, “th...thanks, Nance.”

In the bathroom afterward, washing sticky juice off his fingers, his eyes keep catching on the toilet cubicles, one small and one handicap beside two urinals. No yellow CAUTION tape in sight. There's enough space beneath their walls for the same sort of illicit activities to take place as they had in the hardware store.

Grunting to himself, Staci rips the paper towel the wall dispenser sends out with so much force that it rattles ominously in its mount. That, too, makes him think of The Stalls. Staci grumbles nonsense beneath his breath and balls the towel up without drying his hands off. Settles for wiping them against his thighs.

In his living room channel surfing, catching the tail end of a TLC medical documentary about burn victims. The woman on the screen talking about her harrowing journey has glossy silver-pink burns creeping up her forearms, poking out of the collar of her shirt up along her throat. They don't look like Red's, and still he pops into Staci's thoughts unbidden.

He watches the remainder of her segment and then turns the TV off.

At the mom 'n pop grocer near his apartment, the teenage girl ringing up his order has recently dyed her hair orange. Not auburn, not even fire engine red, but orange. Carroty. It's obscenely bright, too eye catching, and if he takes a deep breath from even three feet away from her he can smell the remnants of dye wafting off of her like perfume.

She catches him staring and gives him an awkward, self-depreciating smile. Words catching on her lips like the metal of her braces, she says, “Wasn't supposed to be this color. The box _said_ 'rich auburn', not – not carrot top. Mama says s'what I get for trusting a box dye.”

It's easier to dispel the memories with her warbling voice, his brain thankfully refusing to take the association any further than it already has, but then he feels bad for being a dick.

“It looks nice,” he mumbles, resolutely watching her hands as she runs a thing of Greek yogurt over the scanner. Clear skin, youthful. No scars. Small and dainty. “S'different.”

“It's too different. Everyone notices it. Not a lot of redheads in this area, y'know?”

Staci laughs a touch too forcefully.

-

Even if—even if he _weren't_ straight, there's no way he'll ever see Red again. Despite the lack of red heads in the area, it'd be near impossible to find him going off the little Staci knows about him. Scarred, red headed—and that's presuming the carpets match the drapes—and male. Caucasian. Age anywhere from thirty to fifty, and isn't _that_ terrifying and thrilling, driving home just how fucking little he knows about someone who's touched him so intimately.

He could probably pick his dick or those scars out of a lineup, maybe those tan fatigue boots, though that would most certainly _not_ help him in any way shape or form.

Red could be from any of the number of small towns in the area that use Polson as their go-to in between, rather than making the trek to one of Montana's true big cities, and while their populations are as minuscule as Hope County's own that's still a lot to sift through with nothing but “ginger pubes, military boots, and weird scars.”

Hell, Red could be just passing through. A long haul trucker contracted by Home Depot, only in town long enough to drop his load—professionally and, fuck, sexually. Or maybe someone just stopping at Home Depot to take a piss on a long roadtrip. His family in the parking lot waiting, children plugged into their tablets and his wife snoring quietly in the passenger's seat, sleep mask snapped over her eyes. All while Daddy fucking comes all over some stranger's lap.

It's not like if he went back to that Home Depot he'd be there waiting in the stalls, like he keeps a regular nine to five tugging on dick all day long.

It's not like Staci _w_ _ants_ to find him. Doesn't want to go back and find him there waiting, ready to touch Staci with those warm, steady hands. Doesn't want Red to encourage him to go any further, to command him again, this time to move forward and take that cock into his mouth.

-

He's not gay. Not—not queer at all.

He's not.

-

He's not going to be able to refinish this deck.

Mostly because the wood's rotted in more places than its not. They'd never properly sealed the damn thing in the first place, and years of dirt and grime accumulating on its surface have masked the growing imperfections in the wood. He's been powerwashing it so that he can stain and seal it, and he hasn't even gotten very far when he realized he really wasn't going to be able to do this.

Staci turns off the powerwasher and waits for it to finish gurgling in his hand before he sets the sprayer and hose down. He wipes sweat off his forehead with the back of his forearm instead of his hands, slick with blowback grime and runoff soap from an imperfection somewhere in the nozzle of the sprayer, and heads towards the patio door. Knocks on it with his elbow so he doesn't smear the glass pane of the door with his filth. Streaks it anyway, but it's not as noticeable as it'd be had he used his knuckles.

“You can't be done yet,” his mother says before she's even opened the door all the way. She's making dinner while he works, and the smell trickles out behind her, makes his stomach rumble. He'd come over straight after work and skipped his lunch _again_ , a habit he needs to break himself of when it comes to this damn deck. “Stace, you've barely started.”

He walks backward, maintaining eye contact, until he reaches the spot where he'd sat down the sprayer. The deck groans under his weight the entire time.

There's a small patch of grime-free wood, splintered from the force of the spray and still bubbling with the soap filtering into the machine on the opposite side of the water supply. It looks soggy and soft even without the water built up on its surface. He presses his foot against it and it buckles after only a little bit of pressure is exerted, cracking quietly before the wood just outright gives.

“Oh. Well.”

“This thing's always been a piece of shit—”

“Staci Pratt!”

“Mom.” Rolls his eyes hard at her. “This thing's older than me and we've never taken care of it.”

Retracting his foot, Staci looks down at the hole in the wood he's created. It's kind of deep, maybe two feet of dead air between the remaining deck and the ground itself. The newly exposed earth beneath is mostly dead from years of limited sunlight and water, the dirt he can see bone dry. Intricate spiderwebs catch in the light.

“If you really want a deck, you're gonna have to pay someone to build you a new one. The only thing keeping this one together is a prayer and the layer of crud I'm washing away.”

“We can—”

“No, _we_ can't, mom. I know how to do a lot of stuff but not – not this. Either we remove it entirely or you hire someone. I know it'll be expensive. You don't have to do it right away. But I can't do this properly myself.”

She huffs at him, a frown marring her usually soft, warm features. Hands on her hips, fingers flexing in the dishrag she'd brought outside with her. He hates that he's put that unhappiness in her, hates that even though he _knew_ he was out of his element with this that he wouldn't be able to help her like he'd been talked into.

“You win. Ask around at the Station for recommendations, okay? I'll ask around the hospital, see if any of the other nurses have anyone they've used before.” Slowly that frown leaves her, and Staci feels a pressure he hadn't even noticed subside from his lungs. “Guess that means you can return that stain then.”

“I'm not going back to Home Depot,” Staci hisses at her retreating back. She waves the dishrag in his direction and yells something over her shoulder about him washing up and helping with dinner instead, missing the way his fingers twitch and his cheeks flood with color.

-

McKenna's spinning in his desk chair fast enough that Staci's a little nauseated just watching him. He doesn't know how he's not puking yet, circling round and round like a green and blonde blur. An inverted, cackling pistachio. Staci'd be at least green as their uniforms, but McKenna doesn't look any worse for wear when he finally decides to stick a hand out and stop himself. His cheeks are a little flushed, blonde curls huge and messed, but besides that he looks fine.

“How's that deck shit going?” McKenna asks as he rises to his feet. His balance is off, his bulk swaying first left and then right before he manages to wrangle his equilibrium through sheer force of will. He's a big guy, tall and muscled and tan, probably would fall like a fucking redwood if he went down. Staci's not eyeing the vein snaking up his forearm, exposed to God's eyes and Staci's own by his non-regulation rolling of his uniform sleeve. “Been quiet the last couple days, lately it's been all you bitch about.”

“It's uh. It's on pause.” It's been a week since he made part of the deck Swiss cheese with his foot. Honestly he's not chomping at the bit to sniff around for contractors. This project probably won't take long, but his mom'll insist he be there every step of the way, thus giving up all of his free time for however long it takes to rip down and rebuild a deck. Force him to loom around and watch a group of sweaty middle-aged men chew the fat together under the steadily warming May sun, knowing that he had made a half-assed attempt to do some of this himself and failed. “Deck's in shit shape. Need to tear it down and build another one if she still wants one.”

McKenna makes an inquisitive sound, a thoughtful little rumble in his throat. Before he can say what's obviously on the tip of his tongue, the walkie on his belt crackles to life. Crashed boat out on the Henbane, its operator believed to be intoxicated. No report on the operator's status, though the person who called it in said they saw some blood among the crushed beer cans floating on the deck.

“I might know a guy,” McKenna says once he's responded to the call. “Brother of a – uh – paramour.”

Staci's nose scrunches. Doesn't really know McKenna all that well, but based on some of the stories he tells about his shameless exploits, Staci's not really sure he wants to contract anything from or with anyone one of his “paramours” has blood ties to.

Wonders if this is one of the male or female paramours, wonders if McKenna would tell him if he asked.

Not that it means anything. Not that he's curious. Not that his brain desperately wants to pair McKenna with some mystery man and manipulate them in his head like barbie dolls.

-

He might—might be a little queer. Bisexual? Is that—is that the term?

God. Fuck this.

-

Staci gets home that night and drinks, hoping to blur out all of the thoughts of McKenna and some faceless, formless, somehow still recognizably _male_ paramour that've been plaguing him all day. Hides his laptop so drunk him cannot troll the internet for more porn. Avoids the TLC channel all together, can't stand to stumble into another medical show and be reminded of Red, whom he keeps transposing onto McKenna's paramour.

“Fuck this,” Staci whispers, staring at the living room ceiling but seeing McKenna's muscled back instead. Sees arms wrapped around McKenna's waist, long and freckled and scarred. Flat, square nails digging into the sunkissed skin rippling just above McKenna's ass.

Once more, with feeling, “Fuck this.”

-

There's a business card on his desk when he gets in the next morning, still a little hungover from his bender. The light and the tiny font are hurting his bloodshot eyes, and it seems to take forever for his brain to process what's written on the card's face in black writing.

 ** **SEED CONTRACTING****  
Jacob Seed  
Hope County, MT  
jacobs@seedcontracting.com  
www.seedcontracting.com

 ** **CONTRACTOR SERVICES****  
ELECTRICAL / PLUMBLING / DRYWALL / RENO / DECKS  
KITCHENS / BATHROOMS / BASEMENTS / EXTENSIONS

There's more services listed and another column further down, this time showing the handyman services available, but Staci's eye snags on the note left beneath the card. Scrawl quickly jotted in McKenna's messy, slanted hand.

_Spoke with John, who's spoken to Jacob. Knows a Pratt is going to call for an estimate. John owes me one, so he should get you a discount._

_:-)_

John, so male paramour.

Staci shoves the business card in his breast pocket and releases a shuddery breath as quietly as possible.

-

As soon as he's able, he unloads the business card off on his mother. Just so happens to be at dinnertime the very same day, seated at his mother's kitchen table as she flutters around the room trying to locate her wayward salt and pepper shakers.

“You're not gonna call for me?” she asks. A few seconds later, she makes a triumphant, crowing sound and pulls both shakers from their perch atop the fridge.

“I dunno what all you want done, mom. Just – just call. You got this,” he says. It's not actually his deck any longer, anyway. Hasn't been for a handful of years now, and the less he can do with this project, the better.

He lets her know that this Jacob Seed is expecting her call, that she's to mention she's the Pratt John spoke of and see where the conversation takes her.

Even knowing she's going to do it, Staci reaches for the serving ladle before she's seated and squawks when she smacks the top of his hand. Sucks on his knuckles dramatically and pouts when she wags a finger in his face.

“We have to say grace first. If not for your soul, then mine.”

-

 **Mom 09:37AM**  
What time do you take your lunch today? Spoke with Jacob!

 **Mom 09:39AM**  
He's coming by today to take measurements and give me a quite

 **Staci 09:42AM**  
at like one

 **Mom 09:43AM**  
Oh :( He'll probably be gone by then

 **Mom 09:45AM**  
I don't wan t to be alone with a strange man in my house!

 **Staci 09:46AM**  
just don't let him murder you with a screw driver and hide you beneath the deck and you'll be ok

 **Mom 09:50AM**  
I'm going to ask my church friends to pray for you some more.

 **Staci 09:51AM**  
should ask one of your church friends to meet the strange man with you :-)

 **Mom 09:53AM  
** Staci

 **Staci 10:01AM**  
how can you silent treatment me over the PHONE

 **Staci 10:08AM**  
MOM

 **Staci 10:12AM**  
ugh when's he supposed to get there? i'll see what i can do

 **Mom 10:15AM  
** Around noon :)

-

It's surprisingly easy to get the Sheriff to let him go for an hour or so in the middle of his shift. Staci stands on the other side of his desk gaping at Whitehorse, who's pretty much already dismissed him after Staci said he'd make up whatever time he'd lost. He may or may not be hoping that by dragging his feet, Whitehorse will rescind the acceptance and force Staci to call his mother, saying he tried but ultimately failed.

“Y'gonna get a move on, Pratt?” Whitehorse asks.

“Yeah – yeah, I guess,” Staci mumbles.

“Y'don't sound too sure about it.” Fingers lacing on the desktop, Whitehorse looks up from the paperwork he'd been sifting through and cocks a brow at Staci Pratt, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

“It's just, uh, that I really don't wanna—”

“Go help your mama, boy,” Whitehorse says with a snort, “while you still got one, huh?”

“That's – that's kinda dark, Earl.”

“Stop dragging ass, Pratt.”

-

When he pulls up at his mother's house this time, there's a white truck with a SEED CONTRACTING decal on its side, parked beside her Taurus. Staci parks behind his mother's car, not wanting to block Jacob or whomever in, and slowly makes his way through the grass—again, avoiding the walkway—and into the house.

It's warm and bright inside this time, the curtains parted and the windows cracked, allowing the midday sun to pour in. There are two sweating glasses of water on the coffee table, coasters soaking up the excess moisture, and a packet of papers attached to a clipboard.

He can hear his mother's musical voice floating in from the ajar kitchen patio door. Staci walks past the familiar crosses and religious knickknacks hanging from his mother's walls, beneath the wrought-iron BLESS THIS HOUSE fixture mounted on the archway separating the living room from the kitchen, and into the kitchen to lean against the doorframe. His mother's standing in the grass on the other side of the deck, speaking to a man Staci presumes to be Jacob Seed, Jacob himself not in Staci's line of sight. Giggling at him, almost, while twirling the cross hung around her neck, and isn't _that_ a strange thought.

Staci watches her push a curl behind her ear and wrinkles his nose hard. His mother's attractive—petite and shapely, which is _not_ a word Staci wants to ever again assign to his mother, she's got these big brown doe eyes and a beauty mark above the right side of her upper lip that his father had always said drove him crazy. Obviously not crazy enough to stick around, but Staci's got to admit it's cute. Only in her early 50's, she'd had him young, right after she'd graduated from community college with her associate's degree in nursing, and she's taken care of herself through it all—and while he'd be thrilled if she found someone to make her happy, he doesn't wanna, y'know, be an active participant in all of that just yet.

“Be careful where you step, Mr. Seed, there's a hole.”

“Jacob's just fine, and thank you, Ms. Pratt.”

“You can call me Daniela—oh! Staci, you're here!”

Not wanting to be an active participant yet or not, Staci's gotta admit it's cute the way she startles when she notices him. It's not so cute how she looks at him like she wishes he hadn't been able to come out, and it's even less cute when he gets his first look at Jacob Seed.

God, he's a red head. A fucking _huge_ one, Jesus fuck, where'd they been hiding him? A bunker out in the Whitetails?

And his face. Oh, his face. He's covered in scars. Burn scars from the look of it, but from this distance they could be really, really bad acne scars. God, he hopes they're acne scars.

Burns scars, acne scars—he's still strangely attractive, like they're an accessory and not a deformity.

It feels like his eyes are going to _pop!_ out of their sockets. Desperately he looks at Jacob's arms, trying trying _trying_ to see if they're free of the blight his face and neck have endured, but Jacob's not only got on a long sleeve flannel but gloves as well. Tan and well used, a shade or two darker than Red's boots were.

Jacob makes a humming sound in the back of his throat, and in a few quick, long strides—he's wearing jeans but no fatigue boots, just a simple pair of work boots as well broken in as the glove. Thank God, yet another similarity broken—he's crossed the deck, coming to stand before Staci. Only a couple inches taller, but he's broad and so fucking bulky Staci feels dwarfed in comparison. Inadequate. Professional and handsome with a stupid smirk on his face, Jacob offers his gloved hand like Staci's not having a mental breakdown in the doorway.

Staci takes the offered hand and shakes it as quickly as he can. Pointedly does not think about how engulfed his hand was in Jacob's, how soft the material of the glove was against his skin. Somehow manages to convince himself not to yank off the damn thing and start screaming, whether Jacob's hand is scarred or not.

“Jacob Seed,” he introduces, taking a step back.

There's no way out of giving Jacob his name. His mother's just said it, his mother's _right there_ , and he's in fucking uniform with it fucking emblazoned on his breast—there's literally nothing he can do but grin and bear it.

“Staci Pratt,” Staci more or less fucking mumbles. Grinning, bearing it, complaining internally.

“As I was telling Daniela,” Jacob says, and out of the corner of Staci's eye he can see his mother steadily approaching, still worrying at the cross on her neck but almost pouting now. He'd look at her fully if he could, but he can't seem to look away from Jacob's mangled face, those too blue eyes, the way the sun catches in his fiery hair. He takes another step back and turns his body a little more to face Staci's mother better, so he's got both Pratts in view. As soon as he does it Staci wishes he hadn't, because now that he can fully see them side by side, watch the way Jacob's eyes cut to him and then to his mother, the way her eyes follow the long line of Jacob's body, Staci would've preferred to never ever have to see them side by side.

In the same vicinity, if he could help it. God, the same _state_.

This cannot be Red. Cannot. What're the odds?

He shakes his head forcefully, hoping it'll clear his thoughts like an etch-a-sketch. Rubs at his eyes with the heels of his palm, allowing the pressure to build and build until he can't take it any longer, and then keeps on, while Jacob's voice drones on in the background, warm and low.

“Y'alright there, Deputy?” Staci can't pinpoint whether or not that rumble is _The_ Rumble. Whether it is or isn't, it jars Staci from his thoughts. Has him looking up and blinking around the bright sunshine and the colors bursting in his vision to find Jacob Seed watching him, amused. “Y'hear anything I said?”

“Sorry, long day so far. I, uh. I heard none of that,” Staci admits, mostly to the deck than to Jacob himself.

Jacob sucks air through his teeth quietly, none of the cutesy professionalism he was laying on thick for Staci's mother. Chuffs out a laugh when Staci squirms, heat flooding his cheeks.

God, this can't be happening.

And even if it _is_ _—_ there's no way he recognizes Staci, right? None of his more identifying features were showcased beneath that cubicle wall, not like Red—just his big shit belt buckle and his bracelets, both of which he's wearing right now. The belt buckle is hugely popular in this area, probably every schmuck in a 100 mile radius has one just like it, and the bracelets are relatively nondescript, wooden beads in dark shades from his trip to Thailand when he was in college. Staci could probably find something similar in Polson if he was given the time to look.

Both of Staci's sleeves are rolled completely down but not buttoned, Staci disliking how confining the fabric becomes when that last box is checked. As a result, the way he's got his arms crossed over his chest showcases them clearly, easily.

It's not enough—it really, truly cannot be enough. Maybe Jacob's just kind of a dick to everyone but pretty women? Maybe that's just his fucking personality, and Staci's losing his mind for no reason.

Staci clings to that hope with both hands.

“Should take us four to five days to complete this whole project, depending on if your mother decides to go with any of the add-ons she's mulling over.” Four to five _d_ _ays_ , and it could go on longer than that? Trying to rein in his desperation, Staci looks over at his mother and pleads with his eyes, but she's not looking at him. She's watching as Jacob opens his right arm and gestures to the existing deck around them. “Full day and a half to rip this one down, get measurements of the exact dimensions required. Three and a half to four to build and stain the new one, and whatever add-ons are requested. Sound doable?”

No. “Yeah, I guess?”

“Good. Good. Do you have my business card? Your mother said we may be dealing with you on the days she has to work and you're off.” When Jacob calls her “mother”, Staci can see her nose scrunch up like his had earlier. Normally he'd take the opportunity to rib her a little, smile brattily and bat his eyelashes, but this is the least funny situation he's ever been in in his life. “She's already given me your cell number for business purposes.”

Of course she has. Staci mumbles a negative, that he'd given her the card passed to him.

Jacob produces a metal tin from his pocket and quietly cracks it open. Even through his flannel, Staci can see his muscles shift and bunch beneath the fabric as he moves. He selects a card from the case at random. Crosses the space between them once more, coming to a stop right beside Staci. He seems to move in slow motion as he lifts the card up and presses it face-first against the house.

Pauses. Looks over his shoulder at Staci, _draaaags_ his eyes up from Staci's work boots to his eyes, lingering pointedly on the belt buckle and then Staci's beaded wrist, and then with huge, white teeth takes the middle finger of his right glove into his mouth and slowly removes it, slowly removes all of the air from Staci's lungs, because he knows those hands, oh God, oh fucking Christ.

After scribbling something quickly in Sharpie, writing fluid and unhampered by the bulk of his—Red's, Jesus _fuck_ —glove, Jacob says, "S'my cell number. The number on the front is my business landline.” Holds out the card, holds Staci's gaze, holds all of the oxygen in his lungs captive until it feels like his head might burst.

Staci wills his fingers not to tremble, and reaches out to take it. Thinks he hears the wooden beads clacking together when his fingers close around the cardstock.

“I should—I should get back. Looks like everything's, uh, everything's taken care of.”

“You should! Have a good rest of your shift, sweetie,” his mother chirps. Probably eager to see him leave, have Jacob's attention back on her. He can't stay here, but the thought of leaving her with him—Christ, there's no winning.

“Do have a good rest of your shift, Deputy. Hear there's not a lot of crime in this area, but a lot of wildlife activity. That right?” There's something about the tone of his voice that's got the hair on Staci's neck standing up. Lower than usual, practically purred. “Lots of famous animals in this area, too, or so the locals tell me. There's the bear, right? His name's—Cheeseburger?”

“Staci used to love him when he was a kid. Had all these novelty items—I probably still have them in the attic,” she says warmly.

Jacob laughs, and the sudden rush of blood to Staci's face has him swaying lightly into the doorframe. “There's another famous one, the – the cougar, right? What's its name?”

“Peaches,” Staci says softly.

“Peaches,” Jacob echoes, and he sighs happily at the end, a little breathy note that takes Staci right back to that cubicle. “That's it.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big shout out to [different_approach](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Different_approach/pseuds/Different_approach) and their [fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15456810), in which staci does porn surfing as an, uh...educational venture...but GOD did i think about that shit the entire time i wrote the scene here.
> 
> y'all can bug me on [tumblr](http://boneforts.tumblr.com/) if you'd like. swear i'm not as depraved as my fan fic makes me out to be lmao
> 
> ALSO i know just as much about deck building as i do about fixing a flooded basement, so if my shit's inaccurate BRUH i'm sorry hire a professional, i'm just tryina give these idiots a space in which to awkwardly bone. also squared for some reason i'm batshit about jacob as a contractor/handyman and i Stan the Shit out of it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'd like to start by apologizing to hope county, daniela pratt, and jesus christ for this chapter :x

It's not that he's _hoping_ Jacob'll text him, it's just that it's already past four o'clock in the afternoon and he kind of expected Jacob to have shot him some ominous message crackling with aggressive sexual energy by now. Maybe make some lewd joke about hauling Staci's wood, or a line about looking forward to nailing him complete with a cute hammer emoji—but all he's got so far is radio silence.

Why go through all that drama and flare to explicitly let Staci know Jacob's got his number—literally, figuratively, God fucking dammit all—if he's not going to initiate a game of cat and mouse before the construction work begins?

He doesn't even really want to talk to that giant ginger asshole, with his shark grin and his _stupid way of removing gloves from his scarred, massive hands what the fuck_ , and his too blue eyes that walked like fingers up the length of Staci's body, his gaze sending goosebumps rippling out out out across Staci's skin—expect for how Staci really kind of does. Now that the head rush has worn off, now that his hands have stopped shaking and his heart's not threatening to rocket out of his chest, he's almost itching to see Jacob again. A dope fiend digging at the crook of his elbow, the junction of his neck and shoulder, scratching aimlessly and tearing himself to shit as his eyes cant around looking for that familiar Red to take the edge off.

They say one hit's all it takes, right?

But he's not going to text first.

-

By the time the Staci's gotten off shift—only forty-five minutes later than he was originally slated to get off, the Sheriff eyeing him suspiciously when Pratt had refused to make eye contact when he got back to the station, mumbling in Whitehorse's general direction, “Mom didn't really need my help, sh-she had it, uh...covered”—and the sun's gone down, he's nearly vibrating with the desire to talk to Jacob, to touch him. To be touched. Hasn't had anyone else touch him since Red had in that God damn bathroom, not...not intentionally, he doesn't think, but now that he's aware of the fact he can't think of anything else. His thoughts keep circling back around to it, fingers shaking with nerves, with arousal, with fucking anger that _this_ is happening to him now, at twenty-six, when he'd already thought he had his shit figured out.

He won't cave, though, he's not going to _show_ that asshole how desperate he is after one encounter, but God—God, does he want it.

It's kind of fucking embarrassing, how deep he's in already. It's gotta be all the risk and humiliation involved—Staci's always been a little fucked in the head when it came to shit like that. Gets him hot, gets him hard. Gotta be wired somewhere a little off, signals crackling down his neural pathways only to thunder down the wrong channel at the last moment. Make him think Jacob's warm rumbling, mocking voice is the hottest thing he's ever heard.

Maybe his mom dropped him a lot as a baby and didn't tell him?

God, his mom.

From his sprawled perch on his couch, Staci covers his face with his hands and goes back to a safer topic than thoughts of his mother co-mingling with how attractive he finds Jacob. He might be damning himself here, but he can still save his mom, so he focuses on how he kind of, sort of, maybe's been thinking about changing his OkCupid and Tinder profiles to include men now, too.

Somehow, that's an easier topic to bear.

Hasn't gone through with it yet, but it's been in his thoughts for days now. Almost did it a night or two ago when he'd been drinking—and he really needs to do one of three things: stop drinking; hide his laptop more because he's really not going to stop drinking, and drunk him gives zero God damn fucks about sober Staci Pratt's fears, dreams, and aspirations; or get a fucking grip and embrace this newfound bisexuality he's been fighting since having to change in the locker room for baseball practice in middle school.

Staci's gone from “I'm straight, I've drunkenly messed around with dudes and never enjoyed it” to “I'm, uh...kinda sorta into this much older dude that I've met one and a half times—the 'and a half' because I didn't _meet_ meet him that first time, just his penis” in the blink of an eye. Maybe a few rapid blinks while trying to dispel the panic, but Staci's more or less slipped and skidded down the mountainside of queerdom. Found himself inside a trash heap ruled by one Jacob Seed.

He thinks maybe he's always known, even when he fought it. Kept on with his drunken experimentations in college, lackluster though they were—and looking back on it, it was probably entirely the alcohol's fault for the lack of enjoyment, whiskey dick and poor coordination don't really attractively mesh when you're fumbling in the dark—there was still excitement there, a different kind than the type he felt when he fucked girls. A rush he'd never experienced before that he quietly wrote off in the morning as side effect of the alcohol he'd imbibed. Managed to maintain his friendships afterward by both parties playing the _I don't remember a thing last night, dude, do you?_ card, even when he could actively remember feeling their mouth on him, or his on them.

He'd messed around a handful of times, more than any actual straight guy ever would, which should've been a red flag right from the start. If you run past something quickly enough, though, keep your thoughts empty and your blinders on, those flags just look like little red blurs. Could be anything—flowers, gnomes, shrink-rayed fire hydrants clustered weirdly together.

He'd just kept unconsciously worrying at it like a loose tooth, like if he prodded it enough the tooth would _pop!_ out on its own. Getting drunk with his room mate and their friends and slip sliding _again_ into a rough hand shoving down his pants. Letting drunk him confidentially take the reins, trying to lead sober, sensible, scared shitless Staci Pratt down the path of self realization.

Like the pieces would all fall together and finally, _finally_ show him the full picture, if only he touched enough dicks when he could barely see them, or had enough pink cheeked, glassy eyed Science Majors slobber gracelessly all over his junk.

It's fucking stupid how all it took for him to push those pieces together, make it click in his head, is sobriety and a ginger dick peaking out at him from beneath a cubicle wall and that stupid God damn little satisfied sigh Jacob utters that makes Staci's brain fucking short circuit.

He wishes he'd have cottoned on in college, though. With people his own age, with fumbling hands his own speed. Not with a man at least twice his junior, with confidence in himself and his sexuality exuding out his pores, that made Staci's inner monologue screech and wail about falling prey to the whole _daddy issue_ thing he's got going on.

Staci's always been keenly aware of the image he presented, how his masculinity was portrayed—scrawny up until sophomore year, always with too much soft hair even when his mother cut it for him—as a child whose father abandoned him. As a child quick to frustration tears, wrapped around his mother's pinkie, his closest God damn friend. Defensive in grade school because children are _relentless_ , poking fun at his name, asking him if he was a faggot before he knew what the word even meant. Telling him his mother must've known before she birthed him to give him a gay ass name like _Staci_.

He's evened out a lot since his turbulent youth. Found his footing with a job that he enjoys, that garners him respect and power and sex, on occasion. Decided he didn't give a shit if his name was _gay_ or hair was _girlie_ , it's a fucking name and his hair looks fucking good. Even sweeter is how his hair's thick and full while the troglodytes he'd gone to high school with, the ones that always made fun of him, are already going fucking bald.

He checks his phone again, berating himself as he confirms for what feels like the millionth time today that there aren't any new messages from Jacob, just one from his mom.

 **Mom 6:25PM  
** You seen the cinnamon? I'm trying to make cookies and can't find it :(

Hmph. Probably making her County famous snickerdoodle cookies, pulling out all the stops to try and woo Jacob and his crew. Mainly Jacob, though, if her wandering eyes and little giggles have anything to say about it. The little green demon in his chest laughs at her, wants to crow that Jacob's not interested in her beyond ensuring a good Yelp! review because he's more concerned with what's in her son's pants.

Staci immediately feels like shit afterward.

 **Staci 6:25PM  
** not exactly something i immediately gravitate towards when i'm in your kitchen, mom

 **Mom 6:26PM**  
A yes or no would have sufficed, Stace.

 **Staci 6:26PM  
** check in the spice cabinet again, its container looks the exact same as the curry's.

 **Mom 6:28PM  
** Thank you baby!!

Letting his phone drop face-first to his chest, Staci covers his eyes with his forearm and sighs to himself as the topic he'd been trying to avoid has brought itself front and center, like thinking about his sexuality conjured her up. He can see her in his mind, texting him as her oven dutifully preheats, apron on and hair tied back and all of her necessary tools and ingredients spread out before her, now including the wayward tub of cinnamon.

The idea strikes him that he's probably fought this all so God damn hard because he was worried what his mother would think. Still is, he's fucking terrified about her finding out, but he's older now and eons more secure. Standing on his own two feet with his own space in the world carved out with his bare hands, far enough away from his mother's apron strings that he doesn't feel them tightening around his throat too often anymore. He doesn't think she'll outright disown him, but she'll probably cry. Ask if it was her fault for coddling him, as if that's what makes someone queer.

Tell him she'll pray for him, that the whole church will. Prayers dripping from her lips, tears from her cheeks.

He doesn't plan on telling her just yet, but he hopes that even with whatever fallout there might be, that he can salvage their relationship. He doesn't have a father to turn to, doesn't have any grandparents left alive, and while he _does_ have an uncle and an aunt, the former is in prison for dealing meth and the latter is...a bitch.

Fooling around with Jacob is hot, and even the thought of seeing other guys in the future is enough to have Staci thundering down the rabbithole of _what if's—_ but none of that is worth losing his mother.

 _She'll accept you if she loves you_ , a thought whispers in his head.

Yeah, if only it worked like that.

Staci's tossing his head back and forth, mumbling to himself, when his phone chirps again. It's probably his mother looking for another wayward kitchen item, or maybe Hudson bored in her cruiser lamenting how much she ate for breakfast before her night shift.

Instead, it's Jacob. Staci very nearly drops his phone right on his face when he sees the contact name that he'd set for Jacob pop up—just a simple JS with a string of three emojis after it: a hammer, a tomato, and a middle finger. It's childish but _Jacob_ is childish, too, and anyway Staci would hazard a guess that if that bastard knows how to work emojis that his own contact name is probably just a fucking God damn peach emoji.

Prick.

All of the blood in his body feels like it's boiling as he opens the message.

 **JS 6:36PM  
** See you bright and early tomorrow, Peaches. Daniela already told me you have the day off.

Of _course_ she did.

 **Staci 6:38PM**  
i have stuff to do tomorrow

He doesn't, not besides the usual stuff he does when he's away from the Station. But something about possibly making Jacob sweat it out makes his toes curl in his socks, has him shifting on the couch so he's curled towards the back cushions, phone practically smashed against his nose.

 **JS 6:38PM**  
Sure you do

“Sure you do,” Staci mocks, head bobbing pissily even as he grins.

 **JS 6:40PM**  
Better things to do than grace me with another peak of what's beneath that belt buckle?

God, are they going to do this? Sexting? Does Jacob even know how to properly work a smartphone? The mental picture of Jacob squinting at a tiny glass screen is hilarious but does nothing to quell the steadily rising warmth in Staci's gut.

Before he can reply, Jacob sends him another text.

 **JS 6:41PM**  
Could always just spend my time bending your mother's ear. Sure seemed happy to have me all to herself again once you left.

It's sick how that does nothing to squash the heat building up inside him. How his first reactions are jealousy and humiliation and bright white  _arousal,_ without a shred of outright disgust and outrage in sight.

 **Staci 6:42PM  
** or you could, y'know, do your job in complete and utter silence

 **Staci 6:42PM**  
also do me a favor and leave my mother out of this, asshole

 **JS 6:43PM  
** Feisty

 **JS 6:44PM**  
Where's the fun in that? What incentive do I have to leave Daniela Pratt alone? Gotta give me something to work with

“Give you something to work with,” Staci mumbles to himself. Before he can talk himself out of it, Staci's rolling onto his back and shoving his left hand down the front of his uniform bottoms. The lip of the belt buckle is flesh-warm against the top of his wrist. He works himself through his boxer briefs for a few moments, long enough that the outline of his erection is clearly visible confined in the tight fabric of his pants, and then uses his right hand to open a camera app. It's a bit of a weird angle, still kind of curled in on himself trying to make sure his belt buckle and bracelets are in frame and his double chin from the scrunching is not.

Eventually he snaps one that he's—not proud of, pride left the building when he got on his knees alongside a stranger in a hardware store's bathroom, but all the same he's still kind of fucking proud of it. Long legs stretched out and parted, strong thighs and trim waist front and center beneath his telltale accessories, the ones Jacob had latched onto as Staci had his red hair, his fatigue boots, those fucking scars.

His belt buckle shines from the flash clearly outlining his left hand squeezing around his shaft.

With his shaky, clammy right hand, Staci sends the photo and throws his phone into the cushions. Squeezes himself again and huffs out a pained sound as he lightly ruts against his palm.

**INCOMING CALL**

JS  
Hope County, MT  
6:46PM

**ACCEPT | DECLINE**

This time, when Staci retrieves the vibrating device now tucked partially beneath his lower back, he does in fact drop his fucking phone on his face. There's the desire to not answer the phone, to see if Jacob's desperate enough to call him back and tear into him about being a cocktease, but it's outshined by the desire to just flat out have Jacob's voice rasping in his ear.

**JS 00:01**

He doesn't plan on saying hello, but before he can say anything coy or play hard to get Jacob's talking, almost before the connection is even live.

“Fuckin' look at you, God. Does me teasing you by flirting with your mother get you hard? Knew you'd be a fuckin' handful when I saw you in Polson.”

 _When I saw you_ —did Jacob see him before the whole thing in the bathroom? God, did Jacob _follow him_?

Another pained sound, this one harder to control. Staci tucks his phone against his shoulder and feverishly rips at his belt buckle with both hands, his pants suddenly too tight.

“Standing there pouting at the God damn stain like they'd done you wrong. Pushed you in the dirt, mussed up that pretty fuckin' hair. Didn't expect you to be on the other side of the stall, but when I saw the sleeves of your shirt and those bracelets I knew it was you. Hopeless brat I'd seen before with a fat ass.”

“Not a—fuck—not a brat.” Any venom in the words is wholly lessened by the breathlessness of his tone. Staci squeezes the base of his dick hard before stroking himself, grip light near the base and heavier near the head. If he strains a little over the sound of both of their elevated breathing, he can hear the same trademark sounds of Jacob touching himself that he'd heard on the other side of the stall wall.

The faux-leather of his sofa begins to stick to his sweaty skin, pulling funny when he wriggles and writhes into his own fist.

“That right? Coulda fuckin' fooled me, kid—”

“Not a kid either, you fucking—”

“So God damn pissy, Peaches. Promise to shut you up good and proper real soon.”

“You're _such_ an asshole. God, _you knew it was me—_ that's so fucking creepy, I hate that I love it. Kept seeing red everywhere I went after—after. Like the world was laughing at me.”

Jacob makes a pacifying noise, another one of those long, low hums. Having it right in his ear makes Staci shudder, makes his hand stripe harder as it runs up and down his shaft.

Suddenly, there's a horn honked. He jumps, frazzled, but his hand never slows.

“Are you—are you in public? Jesus, you're messed up.”

“Says the boy sending me bulge pics and letting me come on him in a public bathroom.”

“I'm not—that's—don't call me that. Shut up. Tell—tell me where you are.”

“I'm at fucking Home Depot, believe it or not.” Somehow Jacob manages to groan and laugh at the same time. In his mind, Staci can clearly see that head tilted back in laughter and disbelief. Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows, tucked beneath a thick swathe of red beard. Big white teeth shining in the faint light of parking lot lamp posts. “Out buying last minute supplies for your mommy dearest. Waiting in my parking spot for some dipshit in an RV to make a God damn thirty-point turn to get out of where they'd boxed themselves in—when what falls into my lap but little Staci Pratt again.”

Hissing, Staci says, “You started it.” Still fucking his fist, the springs in his sofa squeaking in protest as he moves.

“I most certainly did fucking not. Was just content to tease, but who upped the stakes? You, Peaches. Playing a game of Bingo or something where the objective is to make me come in as many places in Home Depot as possible?”

“You talk—so fucking much.”

“Don't think I don't know how much you were into it that afternoon, just like you're probably dripping all over your fist for it now. Don't gotta snap and snarl at me, Peaches, I'ma take care of you, promise.”

“What if I never let you touch me again?”

“You and I both know there's no fucking chance of that happening.”

“Fuck—fuck you, I'm—God, I'm—”

“C'mon, let me hear you. So quiet in that bathroom, holdin' out on me. Lemme have it, Staci.”

So he does. Doesn't bother trying to stifle his moans as he comes hard against the back cushion of his sofa, his fingers. Jacob croons mindlessly to him the entire time, Staci unable to follow more than just a few words— _pretty, sweet, Peaches._

He's still coming down from his orgasm when Jacob peaks. Groaning like a man wounded, punched out huffs that have Staci biting his lip. He imagines Jacob sitting in the cab of his work truck, the Seed name on the truck's flank and Jacob's actual seed on the steering wheel, his knuckles.

“You're gonna get arrested for public indecency one of these days,” Pratt mumbles sleepily. His fingers are still damp and sticky but he cannot wipe them on his uniform pants, can't take those to the local family-run dry cleaners with semen stains on them. He settles instead for wiping it off on the inside of his undershirt. It's damp and gross, begins sticking to his chest and abdominal hair immediately, but he's got to shower, anyhow.

Another one of those low, rumbling laughs sounds in his ear. God, Staci's fucked.

“Only if you're the one doing the cuffing. I'll do _anything_ to get out of a charge, Officer,” Jacob teases. There's more rustling on Jacob's side, probably looking for a napkin or a paper towel to wipe his hand off with. “That's the most surprising part—you being a fucking _Deputy_ for Christ's sake. Jesus.”

“There a problem with that?” His phone's still tucked beneath the peak of his shoulder and his ear, his body still curled into the couch. It's dim and warm in his living room, and even with the wet spot on his stomach, Staci's comfortable and loose with Jacob rambling away.

Hopes he doesn't fall asleep like this. He wouldn't be able to survive the ribbing.

“No. Just doesn't match the you I have in my head.”

“You don't know me, Jacob.”

“Yet, Peaches. Yet. I'll see you bright and early tomorrow.”

-

It's nearly one by the time Staci arrives at his mother's house. He hadn't intended on getting there early in the first place—the text he'd received from his mother this morning said they'd be at her house by 9AM—but it's later than he'd planned. Too late to be fashionable, but Staci quietly parks his car behind his mother's once more and slinks towards the front door, even as he hears voices and sounds of construction coming from the backyard.

He can easily pick Jacob's voice out of the fray, like his senses zeroed in on it. His cheeks spot with heat as he fumbles with his keys and lets himself in.

Through the kitchen patio door, Staci can see his mother and two men he's never seen before, Jacob's crew no doubt. One is probably Jacob's age—whatever _that_ is, Staci doesn't know besides _over 40—_ and dark skinned, well muscled. Shorter than Jacob but broad. His shiny bald head reflects the midday sun, amplified by his sweat. The other looks to be a little younger, but still older than Staci. Bushy dark hair thrown up in a messy bun, his beard longer than Jacob's. Smaller and more compact than the others, but he holds his own, ripping up boards with the same stamina. Carts them off somewhere Staci can't see.

They've moved all of the old deck furniture out into the yard, the lawn chairs and matching table-and-chair set with its sunny yellow fabric in desperate need of some soap. On the tabletop sits a long, squat tupperware with a faded orange lid. Probably housing the cookies she was making yesterday before Staci—before. There's a pitcher of lemonade and five glasses scattered around the tupperware, four in different stages of fullness. The fifth is for him, he supposes, and even from here he can tell it's bone dry.

His mother's sitting beneath the table's open umbrella, legs propped up into another chair, bare feet crossed at the ankle. Talking casually with the younger of the two workers, but her eyes are on something else. Someone. Staci can guess who. She's even dressed up a little bit, tighter jeans than she usually wears. A bright white button-up, half undone. Green laced tank top eye catching and hilarious in a fucked up kinda way.

Guess it's a Pratt thing, the thing for redheads and all that green.

He watches them from the relative safety of the kitchen, smiling weakly at the ease with which his mother converses with both of them. After a moment or two, Jacob crosses a stretch of the patio and into Staci's sights. The spots of heat in his cheeks flares hotter when he finally lays eyes on Jacob again, and in the refuge of the indoors he allows himself to drink his fill.

Loose, acid wash jeans tucked into the same work boots from the other day, well loved and broken in, threadbare in places. There's a rip in his back left pocket and paint smears all over his long legs. He's got on another flannel—gray and green this time. Staci's breath stutters, wondering if Jacob picked it on purpose. Shifts in place anxiously, eagerly, wondering what Jacob'll do when he sees Staci did laundry earlier in the week than usual just so he could wear his black and green flannel again. If he'll know that Staci did it just because Jacob remembered it, if he'll see it for the flirting that it is.

This one's sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, showcasing scarred and muscled forearms, and dappled with sweat along his back from toiling in the sun. His forehead, the sides of his skull, and the tips of his ears are a little pink, like he's beginning to sunburn.

Jacob's turning towards him to grab something off the deck's face when he notices he's being watched, body halting its downward motion to assess the situation. His brow furrows for just a moment before his face is shifting from confusion into cockiness, his eyebrow quirked and his tongue running over his teeth as he smirks at Staci.

No use in hiding inside, now. At least he can blame his flush on the heat this time.

“Afternoon, Officer,” Jacob says as soon as Staci opens the door. Makes his words pointed, like he's a disappointed teacher reprimanding a tardy student. Maybe he'll threaten to smack the back of Staci's knuckles with a ruler if he's good? Bad? Whatever. “Wonderin' if you'd ever turn up.”

“Staci! Were you doing your best sea slug impression? It's past noon!” The two workers Staci hasn't been introduced to yet snort and smile fondly at his mother as she indicates for him to sit with her. He humors her, carefully stepping around the already deconstructed parts of the deck. Aware of Jacob's eyes on his back as he goes, can feel that gaze on his person as bodily as he had yesterday.

Once he's at her side, she drops her feet from their perch. Pushes his glass at him as he slowly takes a seat, but he manages to put his hand over the mouth of the glass before she can pour.

“Y'just want me to, what—watch? I dunno why I'm here,” Staci says, pointedly not watching Jacob continue with his work. Even without keeping an eye on him, he's keenly aware of where Jacob is at all times, zeroing in on his grunts of exertion like he had just a few moments ago, crossing the grass instead of using the cement walkway to enter the house.

“What if I'd had to leave?” Daniela asks. She sits the pitcher back down with a pout. Her fingers flutter idly over the handle before her hand's moving again, fetching the tupperware from its spot and hauling it into her lap. Cracking it open, showcasing its prizes.

Snickerdoodles, like he'd expected. A few of her chocolate chip cookies, good but not nearly as popular. Something else in the corner, triangular in shape and golden. Some kind of pastry.

“Cross that bridge when we get to it,” Staci suggests. They share a laugh. For a moment, Staci forgets about the others, about the deck being torn down, about Jacob. Just focuses on his mother's smile, the way her body's turned to him. Thinks about how much he loves her, and doesn't want to disappoint nor upset her.

But only for a moment.

“Wanna try one of my peach turnovers, Stace? Nancy's daughter brought me a bunch of 'em after you'd left, and I couldn't resist.”

Like Pavlov's fucking dog, the moment she says “peach” Staci's shoulders go back and he swallows hard. Tries not to seek out Jacob with his eyes and utterly fails. Unable to look away when he realizes Jacob was already watching him. Leaning against the still-standing deck railing and just leering. Blue eyes sharp on his face, dragging down his body.

“They're good, Peaches.” The way he says it, the lilt to his voice, that fucking spark in his eyes and the smirk of his lips, Staci can't tell if he was addressing Staci himself as that stupid fucking nickname, or telling him that the peaches in the turnover were good—and at this point, it's probably both. Jacob's mouthy, likes to hear himself talk, likes to see Staci squirm with his double entendres.

And, fuck. Staci likes to squirm. Likes the flash of heat he feels knowing Jacob's flirting with him openly while his mother grins, oblivious, thinking the statement was for her.

“Y-Yeah. Yeah, okay.” The pastry's still warm from sitting outside, and the peaches inside are as fragrant as the one he'd been gifted by Nancy personally. Both his mother and Jacob watch him take a bite, and he has to keep himself from laughing at how different their reasons are. “S'good. Sweet.”

“Jacob said they're good peaches, but not quite as good as the ones he had growing up,” Daniela says, leaning forward conspiratorially.

Jacob makes a thoughtful sound.

“You can find good peaches up here too, I reckon. Just gotta know where to look, who's got 'em.” Staci doesn't even need to look up to know Jacob's carefully watching him for a reaction. As if Staci _can_ react—not with his mouth full of pastry, sweetness bursting on his tongue. Not with his mother right there, still fucking grinning like Staci doesn't know where Jacob found his most recent peach. “But I'm biased, I guess. It's not called the Peach State for nothin'.”

Georgia. Explains a lot of the clipping Jacob does, though his accent has mostly faded, washed out like the freckling on his scarred face.

With as innocent a smile as he can muster, Staci finishes the pastry and sucks his fingertips clean in retribution.

“But, no, really. I'm glad you're here, even if you _are_ late. Your aunt's been all aflutter all day, blowing up my phone about this and that. I've had to talk her off a ledge more than once since they got here, but I dunno if I'll be able to do it again.”

“What's going on?” Staci reaches forward for one of the filled glasses of lemonade, waiting for his mother to follow his hand, sigh at him, and then hand him hers. “Ivette overreacting because Tori sneaked caffeine again?”

Tori's the cousin whose barbies he nabbed. Tori's the cousin a year younger than him and pregnant for the first time, and her mother, Ivette, is absolutely losing her mind. Every little thing Tori does worries her, has her calling Staci's mom in the middle of the night for medical advice.

“You shouldn't drink caffeine while pregnant,” his mother reprimands.

Staci thinks of the coffee he had before he left his apartment, and the to-go cup of it iced that he finished in the car. “God, I'm glad I don't have to worry about that shit.”

Jacob snorts.

“Do you have any children, Jacob?” she asks.

“Can't say I do. Did a lot of moving around in my youth, never really had time to consider settling down or having a family.” He shrugs his shoulders, but there's something almost sad in the slump of them. Maybe Jacob had always wanted a family and just never managed to have one? Staci knows incredibly little about Jacob Seed as a person, and though he's sure he'll get to know him biblically he doesn't know as of yet whether that knowledge will extend to knowing him as a human being.

“I keep trying to convince Stace to find a nice girl, settle down. Give me grandbabies while I've still got it in me to keep up with 'em.”

“Mom,” Staci huffs. That's a conversation they have every few weeks. Needling him about his personal life, has he met anyone? Can she set him up with one of the nurse's aides? It's not that he doesn't want children, it's just not on his radar right now. Maybe in another handful of years when he's explored and drank his fill of life untethered.

At _least_ give him the next week or so to fuck Jacob out of his system.

“You've got plenty of years left in you yet,” Jacob says easily.

His mother preens like a bird.

-

After about forty minutes of mindless chatter, watching his mother obliviously volley comments to Jacob only to have him resolutely swing his answers at Staci, Staci rises up out of his chair and says he's going inside.

“It's hot,” he grumbles, put upon. He's not even doing anything and he's sweating. He'd feel bad for Jacob and the other workers, toiling away in direct sunlight, not even in the shade of Staci's mother's dingy yellow umbrella, but he really kinda wants to lick the bead of sweat dripping down Jacob's temple, and he needs the heat for that to happen.

“Wanna do me a favor?” his mother sing-songs, fingers slowly tapping away at her phone screen. She's gotten faster lately, but she still insists on using her index fingers instead of her thumbs.

“No, but I will.”

“Cute, Stace. Real cute. Can you get the bag of epsom salts and the foot soaker out of the bathroom closet? Ivette wants to borrow them for Tori and I keep forgetting to bring them over. Probably should have 'em together for whenever I decide to head on over there.”

Staci's already beginning to walk away, nodding his head. “If they're not in there—”

“The soaker could be in your old room in the closet, but I'm pretty sure it's in the bathroom. Also—speak of the devil." Her phone trills within her hands. "There's your aunt again. Tori probably walked too close to a honeybee and now she's worried about the baby getting some contact sickness, as if that's how botulism works.”

Not interested enough to hear his mother talk his overbearing, bitchy aunt off another ledge, Staci begins his trek around the house. There's enough of the deck gone now that he'd have to bob and weave to get up on the platform and into the kitchen door, so it's just easier to go around.

Plus, he gets to pass right by Jacob.

He makes his way through the living room and down the hall towards the main bathroom, the only full bath in the house—there's a half bath in the master bedroom his mother's been waffling over having turned into a full for months, and another one in the basement, but neither of them have closets and would be unlikely candidates for hosting either the salts or the soaker. As he walks he drags his fingers along the wall, uncaring that his mother would say he's smudging the paint with his oils. It's just something to do, to keep his nervous energy in check. Partially out of spite, he taps his fingertips against the paint and then over the lower part of one of the many decorative crosses mounted to the plaster.

Sometimes Staci forgets how much religious imagery is in this place. There's not a single cross in his apartment and his mother never lets him forget it—nor does she let him forget that he hasn't been to Mass in months. She seems to put up more and more crosses or depictions of Jesus and the saints in her own home the more he fights it, the further he gets from the Church.

He just doesn't believe in this stuff, not really. Plus it's hard to eat and sleep and have sex in a place where Jesus fucking Christ, literally, is staring at you.

It's a little stuffy in the tiny as hell bathroom, the warmth heating up the bowl of flowers and potpourri sitting on the white porcelain tank lid of the toilet, right beneath a creepy little depiction of Jesus on the cross. It takes Staci less than ten seconds to take the three steps to cross from the doorway to the bathtub and yank aside the curtain, revealing his mother's shampoo and other toiletries, and most importantly: the window. After unlocking the top latches, Staci throws the window upward and relishes in the little breeze that's now able to circulate and reach him, floating along with his mother's voice. She's talking animatedly on the phone while Jacob's crew works, but Jacob himself is out of sight.

Staci pouts. Goes to turn around and almost screams when suddenly Jacob is there, quietly pulling the door closed behind him and locking it carefully.

They stare at each other for a heartbeat, Jacob surprisingly silent for once, and then they're on each other.

Jacob kisses him with such force at first that Staci swears he splits his lip, but Jacob hums in his throat and soothes him with soft touches to his flank, his arms, the swell of his ass as he pulls Staci flush against his front. Stumbling a little into each other in the cramped space. God, he tastes like lemonade and smells sun-warm, like fresh sweat, like strength. Jacob showcases that strength by manhandling him a little, turning him around and fucking lifting him up onto the edge of the vanity counter.

It's a much better fit than two grown men standing in this matchbook of a bathroom. On the counter, Staci's able to sprawl a little, to spread his legs and laugh into their kiss as Jacob eagerly steps between them. With a huge, warm hand, he encourages Staci to wrap them around his waist, and rewards Staci's compliance by rutting forward. The angle and force of Jacob's hips has his growing erection rubbing against the seat of Staci's jeans, has the unmounted vanity knocking gently against the wall.

Distantly, Staci can hear his mother's voice but can't make out her words. Can hear the crosses hanging in the hallway shaking in their mounts as Jacob thrusts up against him again.

God, this is so fucked up. Blasphemous. His mother within earshot, the crosses on the wall clamoring. The crucified Jesus above the toilet that Staci can see over Jacob's shoulder staring at him, judging them and their sins. Staci tells Jacob as much in a whisper, and swallows Jacob's ensuing laughter with another kiss.

Kissing someone with a beard is strange, but not entirely off-putting. Jacob's beard and mustache are surprisingly soft where they press against Staci's upper lip, his chin, his cheeks. It almost tickles, the extra stimuli. It's not the only thing different about kissing a man than a woman that sticks out in Staci's head, but it's one of the few things he can focus on as Jacob proceeds to rut and touch him all over like he doesn't know where to start.

“Take off your clothes, Peaches,” Jacob rasps when they part next. He himself is working on getting his jeans open, the metal latch of his belt ringing out when it strikes against the edge of the counter. When the fastenings are taken care of, Jacob pushes both his boxer briefs and jeans down in a single shove.

Staci watches, squirming, as Jacob takes himself in hand. This is a much better show than what he'd gotten in the bathroom at Home Depot, he can see so much more like this, unobstructed: the firm cut of Jacob's abdomen, the heft of his sac, all of Jacob's firm, bare thighs—the red hair and freckles fanned across them, the scarring on the tops, curling around towards the back like clawmarks. It's neither his place nor the time to ask about them, so Staci doesn't. Instead he wrestles with his stupid God damn belt buckle and then the button fly of his jeans, still seated on the counter.

“Not goin' anywhere, you can slow down a little. Gonna kick me in the balls here,” Jacob teases. He helps Staci pull off his shoes and chucks them carelessly behind himself. The sound jars Staci, it's too fucking loud, the window's open, and if he can hear his mother that means she can hear them. “Sh, sh. Breathe. Guess we're just gonna have to be real fuckin' quiet, aren't we?”

Jacob doesn't bother removing his tops, so Staci doesn't either. The counter is cold beneath his ass when his jeans and underwear are thrown aside, back towards his shoes. It's strange being the one sat down and spread out when Staci's so used to being the one in charge, but the way Jacob parts his shyly closing legs to step back between them, flush and skin-to-skin, has Staci forgetting a little of his nerves.

“No, no, no, don't hide from me. C'mere.” Jacob kisses him on the lips again before shifting forward so he can take them both in his hand. Even with his limited drunken experiences in college, it's the first time his dick's ever touched another, and like the beard thing it's strange and Different. He rocks his hips into Jacob's grip, moaning jaggedly as Jacob's cock moves just out of sync with his own. Rubbing, nudging against one another, an entirely new type of friction.

“ _Yeah, I'm having the deck redone. It was in bad condition, rotted in places. The crew's here right now. Have you ever used Seed—what? Of course Tori'll be able to come over when it's done. The stain—Ivette. The stain'll only be harmful if the girl drinks it, I promise you.”_

“Think she has any idea what's goin' on inside?” Jacob asks.

“Shut up. God, shut up. Kiss me, or – or something useful,” Staci hisses.

Huffing his laughter, Jacob continues to jerk them and makes good on Staci's request: kisses down from his mouth, down his throat. He pushes Staci's collar aside a ways before latching firmly to the skin right above Staci's collarbone.

“No marks, Jacob. No—fuck. No marks, c'mon.” It's futile, he can feel Jacob sucking hard at his skin, dragging his teeth across his flesh in hopes of bursting as many blood vessels as possible. At least it's beneath his collar, but God he's gonna be hyper aware of the damn thing until it heals, and then mourn it when it goes. “You're such a bastard.”

“That's a right hurtful thing to say to someone who's gonna make you come soon.”

“God, I regret this—no, no, don't stop, Jacob, come back.”

“Not going anywhere,” Jacob says, though he lets go of Staci's dick and wraps his fist tighter around his own. With utmost concentration Jacob drags his cockhead along the shaft of Staci's cock, smiling around where his tongue's clamped between his teeth as Staci squirms and moans. He steers lower, down the seam of Staci's sac, back back back against his perineum, before there's a dull, damp pressure lightly nudging at his asshole.

At the first press, Staci moans louder than he means to. Slaps his hand over his mouth and furiously shakes his head even as Jacob does it again and again, spreading around precome.

“No—no, no, no, Jacob, I've never—fuck, God—I've never done that before, we _can't—_ ” His body's not agreeing with his frantic protests, his hips rolling down into Jacob's touch as much as he can still seated on the counter.

“Sh your pretty little head, Peaches. Just getting a little taste, promise I won't hurt you none,” Jacob soothes. He pushes a little firmer, breaching Staci just the tiniest amount, before pulling back. “Less you want me to, less you ask real pretty.”

Staci can't believe this is happening. He grips hard at Jacob's hips but makes no move to stop him. The angle's wrong for watching, but he can feel every warm, wet pass Jacob makes over his hole.

Wishes they weren't in this fucking thumbtack sized bathroom so he could try to get that inside.

One more hard press, and Jacob sighs a little before redirecting himself. Pulls Staci's legs tight around his waist and makes sure his cock rests in the soft curve of flesh where Staci's hip meets groin.

“But we will, won't we? Let me fuck that pretty little hole of yours. Have you spitted on my dick wailing for it. Mewling like a bitch in heat,” he says as he begins a rhythm, hips rolling into Staci's. There's a little too much friction in the roll-drag-push of Jacob's hips. He again makes a thoughtful sound in the back of his throat, leans back enough to spit in his hand and crudely slick himself up, before he's thrusting back against Staci.

It's a lot of things all at once.

Strange, firstly. Staci's never been handled like this before, spread out like a woman with a cock driving against him. The area Jacob's essentially fucking is sensitive but not pussy or asshole sensitive, and yet Staci's clawing at his hips, his back, rolling his own hips up against Jacob's abs for any sense of relief. Desperately trying to shut himself up, keep his mother from overhearing and ending her phonecall so she can investigate their joint absences.

Gross, but in a way that Staci's disgustingly into. He's got precome and saliva all over his crotch, and it should make him wince, have him leaning away and not into Jacob's thrusts to preserve some of his dignity, but just like in the bathroom in Polson Staci's wires are crossed. Looks down at the scene in his lap and shivers when he knows he should probably push Jacob off.

Jacob thrusts against him so hard something in the hallway hits the floor.

They both freeze for a moment as they assess the response. Staci's mother hasn't even missed a beat on the phone, and neither of Jacob's crewmates are heading inside to investigate. Probably didn't hear at all. They're both laughing as they start back up again, but Staci can feel Jacob's heart hammering against his chest. He's sure Jacob can feel his own.

Gross, in that when Staci looks up for a moment when a particularly hard thrust has something else in the hallway rattling ominously, that damn crucified Jesus decoration above the toilet seems to lock eyes with him.

“The Jesus behind you is _watching_ us I swear to God, and it's freaking me out,” Staci hisses, though he makes no move to stop Jacob's thrusts, nor his own desperate rolls back into Jacob.

“Let 'im watch, huh? Guess he's got no choice in the matter. He can rip his hands off the cross and cover his eyes if he wants. His ears, tryin'a block out those little sounds you're not able to keep down. Though I suppose it's kinda moot, what with the stigmata and all. Gonna see and hear me wrecking you whether he wants to or not.”

And lastly, most importantly: melting Staci alive. He's trying so intently to keep quiet, biting his lip, biting Jacob's clothed shoulder, pressing his face into Jacob's neck and allowing his beard to absorb all of Staci's shameful, needy little sounds. But with Jacob's God damn _mouth_ there's no reprieve between the thrusts.

“Oh my God,” Staci admonishes. He's not going to touch how much Jacob's dirty talk turns him on, not with a ten foot pole. If his mother knew what they were doing _and_ what Jacob was saying, she'd kill them both for the sacrilege alone.

Another hard thrust sends Staci pressed against the mirror behind him, his sweaty lower back squeaking against the glass. It's such a loud and bizarre sound that it startles a laugh out of Staci, and he just keeps on laughing breathlessly into Jacob's shoulder as the next thrust sends another something in the hallway crashing to the ground.

Still nothing from outside, but Staci can barely hear over their own ragged breathing. He's close like this but won't get there without a hand, so he reaches down to take care of it himself—only to have Jacob jerk his hand away and pin it to the counter.

“Told you I'll take care of you. Gonna take care of you just—gimme—a—fuck, a minute.”

Staci would like to revisit the “gross” point again for the third time, as Jacob groans long and low and comes all over him again. His dick, his hip, his thigh—God, some of it's even on the tail of his flannel, cloudy white and damning. Staci's opening his mouth to bitch, to ask why Jacob couldn't have aimed better like last time, when Jacob's dropping to the floor so forcefully his knees pop. He's got a moment to appreciate the view, Jacob on his knees before Staci's spread legs, before Jacob starts laving at him with his tongue.

One of Staci's hands goes into Jacob's hair. The other goes into his own mouth to keep him quiet. He sinks his teeth into his fingers and worries at them, salves the aching press of his own teeth with his tongue. Sound still manages to leak out of him as Jacob cleans up his own release first and then moves on to sucking hard on the tip of Staci's dick.

He tightens his fingers in Jacob's hair but doesn't push, doesn't direct, and is rewarded as Jacob hums in his throat and takes him down, down, down. The noises he makes as he sucks and swirls his tongue are filthy and so fucking loud. Jacob's so into it, so _talented_ , that Staci has very little recourse but to just let him at it, to do his best to not fly apart, shattered like the squeaking mirror at his back if he presses any harder against its face.

It's the wet fingers pressing idly at his asshole that do it. He's not prepared for them, didn't even see Jacob getting them wet, but he's empty one minute and then being lightly petted at with two fingers at his rim. Staci's leg jerks and he bites down harder on his fingers than he intends, but the pain is muted, far away, as he comes down Jacob's throat.

When his vision clears, Staci has the presence of mind to feel bad about not warning Jacob he was about to come, but the giant asshole just pops back to his feet—a little slower than he went down—and _grins_ at him.

“Pretty sure Christ hasn't gotten a show like that in a long time,” Jacob taunts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was going to have these as two separate chapters, but i couldn't find a proper breaking point that wouldn't make one significantly longer than the other. PLUS i really wanted to get the cross/bathroom scene out and Away from me so i could live in peace for a little while, before these assholes send me into cardiac arrest or something. it's going to get Worse, but uh...no more stigmata jokes? just the one lmao
> 
> i'd thought about making pratt sweat out the bisexual/queer thing s'more, but i...Didn't Wanna. i get enough of the sexuality drama with f/g and here staci's just had his big ol' queer ephiphany, and is cool with it by and large.
> 
> i stayed up way later than i should've finishing this, so if there's errors i'll catch them on one of my many editing rereads.
> 
> ALSO the honeybee/botulism remark pratt's mom makes is in reference to babies not being able to eat honey because honey has clostridium botulinum, and babies immune systems don't process it well and it can cause botulism and kill them :-(


	4. Chapter 4

He tells Jacob to exit the bathroom first solely because Jacob's absence is the most conspicuous. It's definitely not because Staci's legs are tingling, and he doesn't know if they'd bear his weight right away.

Jacob kisses him hard before he's even finished speaking, lewd and full of tongue, cutting him off and derailing Staci's train of thought. Wet and so hot, just as disorienting as the first, Staci's dizzy with this renewed sense of lust crashing over him bodily like a fucking wave. Oversensitive and valiantly straining to overcome biology so he can get hard and come all over again.

He grabs at the bottom of Jacob's shirt, fists his hands hard in the fabric for stability, and sucks the taste of himself out of Jacob's mouth. Salty and heady, bitter and kind of strange. Acrid, different from the tangy musk of cunt. It's something Staci's typically avoided with his female partners out of some unspoken sense of disgust and shame, but he has no choice here but to open up and let Jacob devour and devour, to drink his fill until there's nothing left of Staci Pratt but squirming, white hot _need_.

He briefly considers trying to orchestrate something to get Jacob to be able to leave the house for an hour or so, maybe more if he can swing it. Get Jacob truly alone in the backseat of Staci's car, sit in his lap and rut against that cut stomach as Jacob fingers him open and spews his filth in Staci's ear. Fucked out as he is, though, his thoughts refuse to form cohesively, bumping against one another like swirls of steam rising off his overworked, oversexed brain.

“Might not have the refractory period you do, Peaches, but y'keep pawing at me and I'm gonna have to tell Daniela out there—”

“Shut _up_ , Jacob.” It doesn't stop him from sliding both hands under Jacob's shirt, the flesh beneath warm and lightly furred against his sweaty palms. Staci curls his fingers in it and finally leans back, out of Jacob's space. Opens his mouth in attempt to take in a fresh, clear lungful of air that doesn't taste of sweat and come and _them_ , and ends up laughing again as Jacob chases his mouth, his hands skating up the sides of Staci's thighs. The back of Staci's head quietly knocks against the mirror behind him as Jacob huffs and settles instead for his throat. One of his knuckles impacts solidly with the vanity mirror, making it rumble behind Staci's head.

Poor thing, probably streaked all to shit with his sweat—gonna have to fucking Windex it before he leaves the room. Bleach wipe the counter. Spray some God damn Febreeze to lessen the stench of sex, and apologize to the crucified Jesus over the toilet.

“Go do what you're being paid to,” Staci says breathlessly. As he speaks, Jacob's lips move and suck against him, never losing their seal. Like a God damn vacuum cleaner. A vampire who drinks come instead of blood, the fucking heathen. Staci loses himself to those lips, that inferno of a mouth dragging him down into a hell as red as their owner. He digs his fingernails into that furred stomach, delighting in the groan Jacob sounds against his skin before digging his own fingers into Staci as he doubles his efforts.

With a _pop!_ that echoes in the tiny, superheated bathroom, Jacob finally pulls away from Staci's throat. Admiring his handiwork, dragging a finger down the expanse of its twinging face, Jacob asks, “How does it feel to know that the check mommy dearest's gonna write me is partially paying me to come all over you?”

Shameful. Weird. Inexplicably arousing. Fucking outright damning. Not bad enough to make him stop, and so good he knows he'll do it again because there's _got_ to be something seriously fucking wrong with him.

“Go _away_ ,” Staci says after he's regained some of his common sense. This time he uses his grip on Jacob to push instead of pull. It's cute how Jacob grins at him as he stumbles backward, hands up defensively. His lips part slowly to reveal huge white teeth, a truly predatory lilt to them as they stretch and stretch, spread thin and wide. The tips look razor sharp, fucking lethal fishhooks sunk deep into Staci's craw. Jacob leisurely reeling him in, down down into the gutter.

God, but he wants to taste them again. Roll around in the filth with Jacob.

“Go away.” Third time's the charm it seems, as Jacob chuffs a laugh at him and makes to exit the bathroom.

But before he goes, right as disappointment coils up in Staci's belly heavy and unpleasant, Jacob assesses him quickly, saddles right back into Staci's personal space—his God damn legs opening for him instinctively, eager and delighted to cradle Jacob between his thighs again so soon—and presses that mouth back to Staci's. Like he can't get enough, like he's just as caught up in this as Staci—and the thought of _that_ , of a man like Jacob Seed so swept up in his lust for Staci fucking Pratt that he needs _just one more_ parting shot, _just one more_ taste before he goes, has Staci once more forgetting his _go away_ 's and his _should's_ and _should not's_ for baser urges.

 _Come inside's_ instead of _go away's_ , legs spread like a whore and palms back on Jacob's skin, touching not pushing away.

With slow, deliberate movements, Jacob pulls Staci's right hand off his breast and places it on his cheek, where Staci's fingers dutifully curl against the flesh. His beard is wirier and thicker than his chest and abdominal hair, the texture of his damaged skin whirled and pocked unlike the even, flat skin of his stomach. Staci's so busy cataloging the feeling beneath the pads of his fingers that he almost doesn't notice one of his bracelets shimmying up his arm until his hand's being lifted, and it's cleanly up and over the jut of his thumb.

The beads click together as Jacob stretches the elastic further than before, sliding the bracelet over his own wider wrist. Staci's right arm slowly lowers to his lap.

“Think mommy will notice?” Jacob asks, lifting up his wrist and shaking it until the beads rattle once more, a God damn victory trophy to lord in front of the masses. Practically as good as a pair of swiped panties tucked into his back pocket.

It takes a moment for Staci to process the question, the synapses in his brain misfiring over and over as he possessively takes in his own mark on Jacob's skin. The wood's even more striking on Jacob's arm, the dark brown-black eye-catching with Jacob's array of red-pink-purple scars and strawberry blonde arm hair growing maze like through the ruinous expanse of his skin. Staci likes these bracelets, wears them practically every day, and has shot down girlfriends time and time again when they'd asked to wear one—so of _course_ he's got no problem letting the man who just sucked the soul out his dick and came all over him _twice_ now, wear them and openly damn them both.

There's something so very fucking wrong with him. With them both, Jacob's cheshire grin steadily returning to his face, smarmy and huge and so damn attractive.

Having ticked off the last box on his list of depravity, Jacob finally, _finally_ makes to leave the bathroom and stick to the plan. They've both gotten redressed, but the way Jacob carelessly flings open the door and gazes into the hallway theatrically, head poking out and turning to and fro like a fucking cartoon character, has Staci flushing furiously like he's still half naked, scrabbling down the lip of the vanity and to his wobbly, shaky feet in terror. One hand flies up to cover his marked neck, the other fitfully tugging down his flannel.

“Coast's clear, 'cept the crosses all over the floor,” Jacob teases, looking over his shoulder so Staci can see and not just hear his eyebrows waggling. “Lookin' a bit like Normandy beach out here, watch where you step.”

The token snotty protest on the tip of Staci's tongue halts its progression as he remembers Jacob's fatigue boots. Marines? Army? God, the thought of Jacob Seed in full fatigue green, or even the sand wash camo getup, both pale colors heightening all that _red—_ Staci forcefully pushes the thought away. Tries to aim it out the bathroom door so it'll escape with the bastard that implanted it, however indirectly.

He needs to stop thinking about fucking Jacob Seed, literally and figuratively. Needs Jacob to go back outside before Staci's mother thinks to come look for them.

“I hate you,” Staci huffs.

“Oh, none of that, Peaches.” Jacob tuts his tongue, standing in the middle of the doorway. Speaking casual as your please, like they're absolutely alone and not just illicitly tucked away for the moment. Their only saving grace is that Staci can still hear his mother speaking on the phone with his aunt. Even from where he's standing, Staci can tell she's tired of the conversation, trying to wrap it up. Bone weary from having to weave through the maze of her sister's neurotic bullshit, though an entirely different type than Staci. “Don't play hard to get, now. Know all you wanna do is lay on your back and show me your soft bits. Your not so soft bits, too.”

“Hate!” Staci calls.

“Don't forget the salts!” Jacob returns.

Shit. He'd already forgotten, no room inside his skull for fucking epsom salts with Jacob's low voice in his head, steady and constant like the breaking of the tide against the shore.

The soaker is _not_ in the bathroom closet like his mother thought, but the salts are. Staci quickly grabs them and sets them by the door before returning to the closet and fetching a tub of bleach wipes. He makes quick work of wiping down the counter before taking one look at the vanity mirror. Too lazy to grab Windex and paper towels, he just wipes at the slightly smudged marks left from his back and head with his bleach wipe, and prays that his mother just thinks the humidity built up in here and streaked her mirror.

After, he quickly sprays some cranberry scented something left over from the holidays, mumbles an apology to the Jesus statue still watching him disapprovingly, sprays him right in his little judgy face, and flees across the hall. A skip and a hop to his bedroom, literally in his case as he encounters the first felled cross right before its doorway and has to pivot immediately to avoid stepping on it. It looks like it bounced a ways before settling, skidding like a rock on the face of a lake down the long, skinny rug that runs the length of his mother's hallway.

Jacob's right, though, God it kinda does look like the storming of Normandy beach out here. Crosses in metallic colors on a burgundy and tan rug, splayed out like fallen soldiers on the sand.

Staci hopes his mother doesn't have a particular order for these stupid things. He worries his swollen lower lip as he collects them and remounts them randomly. If she asks about them, he'll say he knocked into them carelessly and had to rehang them. Problem solved. She'd always told him he touched the wall too much, anyway.

He pops into his old room while the last cross is still rattling on its hook. His mother's partially converted it into a guest room, partially into a shrine to his teenage years. All of his baseball trophies are still here, sitting in a row on top of his old dresser, but his videogame and band posters have been removed and replaced for more neutral, tasteful art. Shit he would've hated as a kid and promptly removed, left it in the hallway for her to find and collect.

His old clothes have been moved out of the dresser and into a giant blue-gray tub in the closet. Shit he can't even wear anymore, but his mother refuses to part with and doesn't have room for in the attic.

He bets most of his old junk is in the bedside table, and in the drawers of the desk in the corner of the room with his old desktop computer on top—old graded school assignments, candy wrappers, mechanical pencils and old burnt CD's with no jewel casing and label written in scratchy, smudged permanent marker. Before he'd moved out for good he sanitized the place, removed his physical porn stash and erased his digital one. Threw his lube and condoms into a bag alongside the handcuffs he'd snatched from one of the older girls he'd messed around with in high school.

He'd thought he'd left the bag behind when he'd left for the University of Montana, and the thought of his mother finding it had haunted him until he tore apart his dorm and found it tucked under the twin bed, hidden behind the empty cardboard box his new microwave had come in.

It's almost comical how light that particular insult would've been compared to what he's done now.

The bed sitting against the back wall, bright summer quilt tucked prim and proper and pillows fluffed high against a wrought iron headboard, is the same full sized mattress Staci slept on from ages twelve to twenty-two. He still sleeps in it on occasion, when his mother calls him over and overworks him around the house, and he can't be bothered to drive back across town, or when she plays Abuela's record player and makes him dance and drink with her in the kitchen. Always a little too free with the wine—“S'the blood of Christ, baby, he _wants_ us to have it.”—Staci ends up too drunk and loose limbed and _sleepy_ to do anything but sink into that familiar softness.

He does Not look at the bed sitting against the wall. That way lay madness, red as fucking blood with shiny white teeth.

The soaker is in the closet in its box, perched on top of the blue-gray tote. He doesn't think it's ever been used, the tape sealing it still in tact. Staci snatches it up and shamefully flees this room, too, before his thoughts slip-slide down now familiar perverted corridors.

He dutifully takes both the soaker and the salts and deposits them on the kitchen table. From the patio door's window, he can see that his mother's no longer on the phone, and has proceeded to commandeer Jacob's attention once more. His crew keep flashing Jacob wry looks.

With a cold, sinking feeling, Staci wonders if Jacob's infamous for his conquests on jobs, and if they're waiting for him to nab the doe that's willfully walked into Jacob's sights.

Handsome, scarred, good with his hands, he's every lonely housewife or divorcee's dream. He probably has a lot of does throwing themselves at him.

Staci wonders if he hadn't shown up when he did that first day, if Jacob would've pursued his mother instead. If Staci would've dropped by the next day to find his mother flustered and giggly with her neck marked up like his own, or worse, their bathroom scene retold in a softer, more feminine light.

God, Staci doesn't know what's worse: the vicious feeling of triumph that courses through him at the knowledge that he got there first, that Jacob's more than occupied enough with him and only flirts with his mother to rile Staci up, or the shameful, quiet whispering in the back of his mind that says Jacob fucking around with his mother would probably not be enough to stop Staci from staking the claim that was rightfully his.

 _I can touch you better, y'know._ False bravado, compensating for his lack of experience with men with his eagerness to please _this_ particular man. Doesn't know the first thing about fucking a man, but he'd let Jacob do whatever he wanted as long as he stopped his fling with Staci's mother, and how fucking sick is that?

“Staci! Come back outside!” his mother calls, noticing him creeping in the doorway. She waves from her seat, cheerful as ever. The gold watch on her wrist catches in the sunlight.

Staci pulls his flannel down hard and tries not to play the Imperial Death March in his head as he goes. His left hand comes back damp, kind of tacky. Staci stumbles minutely when he remembers that Jacob had shot on his shirt, too, groaning low and deep as he spent himself in the crease of Staci's groin, all over Staci's crotch. No one seems to notice his faltering or the dueling waves of shame and arousal radiating from his blush splotchy face—except for the Devil himself.

Jacob just shakes his head and grins and grins as he works at pulling an old board up.

“You okay, Stace? Look a little flush,” she says when he's by her side. Suddenly too anxious to sit down, he shifts his weight from foot to foot. Can't make himself stop, so he tries to make himself slow down. Make it more natural. It's better for him to stand, though, safer, as she already has a hand extended to press the back of against his forehead. He can't risk her touching his face, turning his head into hers. He's sure what he's just done is written all over him, knows for a fact it's all over his fucking neck.

“S'just hot, mom,” he mumbles, trying to make his neck as short as possible, hide the damning evidence like some fucked up turtle. He swears he can hear Jacob chuckling at his expense, and it takes every single scrap of common sense _screaming_ at him to shut the fuck up to keep Staci from calling out to him flirtatiously, like they're the only two people around. “Found the stuff you wanted, though.”

“Oh, good!” She doesn't mention that it took him a while to locate two simple items, but even if she did Staci's already got an excuse. _Oh, I got sidetracked watching TV, lo siento, mama._ Simple, easy, believable, and most importantly: ready to go. Maybe laying it on a little thick with the Spanish, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do to get out of accidentally telling their mother they're kinda-sorta fucking the contractor she's been making _fuck me_ eyes at.

God, when did his life become one of Abuela's telenovelas?

“Anyway. Jacob brought me a binder of deck ideas and wood staining to flip through, see if anything catches my eye before they begin building the new one. You wanna flip through it with me?” Finally lowering the hand extended towards him, she grabs a simple white binder off the tupperware of pastries and sets it in her lap. Pats it, like she used to do when he was in grade school and let it slip he had a test coming up. Always ready to walk him through the material, to help him parse it all out even if she didn't know any more about the subject matter than he did.

“Mom, it's your deck, shouldn't you—”

“Y'should help,” Jacob chimes in. With a grunt, he rips a particularly rotted plank out of its spot, the ends of the wood cracking beneath old, rusted nails. Chunks of wood left behind extend into the now empty space, jagged and prickly.

Both Pratts watch the shifting, flexing muscles in his shoulders and back raptly.

“Get familiar with the catalog.” Jacob pushes up the sleeve of his flannel with one of his gloved hands, and then proceeds to wipe the sweat off his brow with the back of his bare wrist and forearm. Staci's bracelet drags across his skin, whicking up the sweat. “It's always easiest if the client knows what they're looking for when we head out to the store.”

“Come again?” Staci croaks.

“I got most of the stuff we'll need when I was there yesterday,” Jacob says, “but Daniela's requested some last minute stuff I don't have the basic materials for, so we need to go back.”

Staci's very pointedly not looking at him, instead staring at his mother, but he knows that Jacob's looking at him. Can practically feel that amused laughter tickling against his earlobe, warm and taunting.

“I may or may not have volunteered you to go to Polson with Jacob tomorrow.” Daniela cracks open the binder, her attention on the plastic-protected pages as rapt as it had been on Jacob's back.

“Mom,” he whines.

Yes! No! Fucking...fucking horrible.

Fucking, probably.

Home Depot Sexual Bingo.

“You know her tastes—you can pick out anything else we might need.” Jacob goes back to prying up boards. He talks around the exertion, his words heavier and huffed out. Staci can't _not_ look at him when he sounds like that—breathy and amused. Winded like he was fucking Staci's thigh in the bathroom. “Look at wood staining, too. See if they have more of the color you picked up on your own.”

Staci closes his eyes and counts to three in his head.

“I'd go if I could,” she huffs. Her eyes leave the binder for a second, flicking past Staci and landing on Jacob's shoulders again. Longingly they take in the wide expanse of strong, muscled flesh. Then she's back to studiously taking in all the theoretical deck setups one man and his crew can offer. “But I have to work.”

“So do I,” Staci says. Token protesting by now, but if he doesn't play the part he always does she might pick up on the fact that, really, this isn't a hardship at all. And then from there she'll begin to pry, scratching and digging until she unearths what Staci plans to leave buried beneath the deck.

“Yeah, at night. You can just go with Jacob and take a nap here before your shift. C'mon, Stace. Someone needs to be here with them so they can use the bathroom and get water. Use the microwave on their breaks, stuff like that. Do you _really_ want your aunt to do all that?”

Ivette would be all over Jacob, worse than even his mother. He'd probably have to hose her off of him, thumb pressed harshly over the opening to better disperse the spray. Maybe get her in the face a handful of times, just to get her to sputter and really back off.

Staci shudders.

“Fine, fine. Is it a normal shift tomorrow?” he asks. He needs to know how long she'll be gone. For strictly decent, loving son reasons. Pure purposes. Not to gauge how and when he approaches Jacob about a repeat performance. Her shifts at the hospital run longer than his, typically 6AM to 6PM. Depending on staffing needs, it can be shaved down to an eight hour shift or inflated to a sixteen. The latter's more infrequent than the former, but with tourist activity up and stupidity knowing no place of origin, even hospitals out in the sticks get slammed.

Daniela mumbles an affirmative that's mostly lost over the strange wiggling, flapping noise her page turning makes. “I'll be gone the entire—aw, Stace! Look at this. What do you think about having this built?”

“S'a shame alright,” chimes in the crew member closer to Jacob's age. He mops at his forehead and cue ball head with a bandanna he fishes out of his back pocket, before cutting a look at Jacob, then to Staci. “Ain't that right, Seed?”

“Damn shame, Lyle. Damn shame,” Jacob concurs, eyes flitting to Staci's.

-

Staci leaves before Jacob and his group do, citing laundry and other household chores mounting up. He's really just anxious to get out of there before he does something stupid like give Jacob his address right in front of his mother and see if he shows up for a repeat session after they tidy everything away for tomorrow.

With a wave of her hand, his mother tells him to just bring his clothes over after they get back from Polson so he can do a load or two here before taking his nap. She can finish the rest for him when she gets off work, and he can pick it up in the morning.

“Y'need to throw that one in the wash, too,” she mumbles, this time indicating his flannel. Lightning quick, she snatches the bunched material above his hip and rubs it between her index finger and thumb. Mere centimeters above the splash stain of _fucking semen_ on Staci's shirt. “You dragged through something on your left side, s'a mess, baby.”

Jacob laughs so hard he starts to cough. Face as red as his hair, eyes shiny with joy and dickish, horrible mirth. His bearded crew member pounds on his back unhelpfully while Lyle mumbles something beneath his breath Staci can't make out over the ringing in his ears.

Staci makes his exit while his cheeks are still on fire, his mother's voice getting further and further away, “Jacob, can I get you some water? Are you okay?”

In his car, his ears ring and ring.

-

It's almost eight o'clock at night when his cellphone starts to vibrate, clamoring angrily against the glass top of his coffee table.

He's preoccupied with a live mission in  _Destiny 2_ and can't pause it, so after a twice-over he settles back into the couch and focuses on the mission and his teammates. Resettles his headset. It's probably his mother or Hudson, and though he loves them both they can most definitely wait.

And if it's Jacob—well, Staci will need both hands and all of his concentration if it's Jacob and their conversation ends the way it had the previous night. Not exactly the repeat he's looking for, but maybe he can convince Jacob to come over instead of doing it all over the phone.

His phone vibrates a couple times, usually one message received right after the other. His phone's jittering across the glass, and it sounds like a God damn jackhammer. One of his teammates ask him what the fuck the sound is and he rolls his eyes. Tells them to mind their own business and actually hit the target they're aiming for, Louisa.

After finishing the mission, Staci disconnects from voice chat and changes locations. Once his warlock is safely tucked somewhere they won't get killed, he leans forward to grab his phone. The vibrations had sent it sliding further away from him than he'd originally placed it, and Staci nearly falls off the couch trying to grab it without leaving his seat.

Right before he unlocks the screen, some dumbshit Titan approaches his avatar and starts to dance.

 **JS 7:39PM  
** Bright and early this time, Peaches. None of that noon shit.

 **JS 7:44PM**  
In fact text me your address because I'm driving and you're getting up whether you like it or not.

 **JS 7:45PM  
** Staaaaaaaaaci

 **JS 7:46PM**  
Playing hard to get is cute and all but I Will get you.

 **JS 7:46PM**  
Promise you that.

Videogame entirely forgotten, Staci fumbles with uncoordinated thumbs for a handful of seconds before he manages to pull up a response box.

 **Staci 7:50PM  
** you can always just meet me at my mom's, that works too y'know

 **Jacob 7:51PM  
** There aren't that many bright ass yellow cars in this town, kid.

 **Jacob 7:51PM**  
Don't make me hunt you down.

 **Jacob 7:53PM  
** Better yet I could just ask your mother. She'd be real interested in helping me.

Staci doesn't dwell on the jealousy and possessiveness that bubble in his gut. Simply sends Jacob a single middle finger emoji and then begins typing out his address immediately after.

 **Staci 7:55PM**  
176 two horn rd, apt 2b

 **Jacob 7:56PM**  
See, that wasn't so bad was it? Wear something pretty for me.

 **Jacob 7:56PM**  
I'll be there by 7:30.

-

Having barely been able to sleep a wink, Staci's up, showered, and dressed by seven o'clock—which is nice considering Jacob shows up at ten after, banging the side of his fist against Staci's front door like it's the middle of the day and not early in the morning. Aggressive, pent up, kind of fucking dickish. Rattling it in its frame, making the chain dangling from one of Staci's locks jingle and smack against dark maroon steel.

He's probably waking up everyone in the complex without a care in the world. Uninterested in anything else besides winding Staci up like a fucking old timey toy.

Staci makes quick work of getting to the front door, flying up from his tiny kitchen table where he'd been working his way through his second cup of coffee. He runs a hand through his still damp hair, adjusts himself in the tightest jeans he owns, and begins the process of unlocking his door. He's barely got the doorknob turning in his fist before Jacob's pushing the door open and spilling into the room.

The eagerness has his blood pumping. No one's ever been this into him before—not club flings, not college fucks or drunken handjobs, not the girl in sophomore year he'd been so sure he was going to marry one day. No one. Staci lets the golden warmth of desire envelope him as Jacob steadily backs him up and presses him against the nearest wall.

“Good morning to you, too,” Staci says, making room between his legs for Jacob to stand when he's got the plaster flush against his back. The wall's cool to the touch from the central air running through his unit, the temperature bleeding through his thin shirt and making him shiver.

“Mm, mornin', Peaches.” His breath smells a little like mint and a lot like coffee when Jacob crowds in close and kisses him. He grips Staci's cheeks a little too tight, thumb and index finger digging into his skin, but Staci doesn't fight him or tell him to loosen up as his head's turned. He just lets Jacob manhandle him, and hums happily when he's rewarded with the kiss deepening. Jacob's tongue in his mouth warm and questing, mapping out the inside like he plans on staying a while.

The front door's still open and the sun's fully risen in the sky, but there Staci Pratt is, rutting up against a man he barely knows, who's twice his age and kind of an asshole.

Staci's desperate for it, grabbing at Jacob's shoulders and forearms. Sliding his fingers into that sweep of bright red hair and pulling until Jacob hisses against his mouth.

It's Staci's turn to chase Jacob's lips when the kiss is ended. He wrinkles his nose as Jacob chuffs out a laugh at him.

“Much as I'd love to fuck you where just about anybody can see, my truck's idling and I've got a job to do.” He backs up from Staci first one step, and then another. Still close enough to gingerly right Staci's rumpled t-shirt, to pointedly graze the edge of a nail against an already peaked nipple.

“You're early,” Staci points out. Now that Jacob's kissed him stupid, worked him up so early in the day, Staci's got an itch to scratch and a _fantastic_ new toy at his disposal. He just needs Jacob to give in. “Ain't there a saying about that? Early bird gettin' somethin'.”

The worm, the dick—what's the difference?

To press his luck a bit more, Staci shifts his hips forward so his t-shirt begins to ride back up in the front. Jacob's eyes drop immediately to the newly bared sliver of lightly furred, cut stomach. He licks his lips slowly and drags the backs of his fingers across Staci's skin, goosebumps rippling in the wake of his touch.

When they reach his hip, they tug his shirt down instead of off.

“Truck. Idling, Peaches. But don't you worry—I've got plans for you.” The smile Jacob flashes him has his heart stuttering in his chest. There's something distinctly predatory about Jacob Seed, the subzero coldness of his eyes, those huge white teeth, all that red and those scars. Staci feels like a prey animal courting its own demise, flicking his little tail and blinking big brown eyes at someone more than happy to swallow him whole. “Grab your things and let's go.”

Staci's got everything on his person already—keys, wallet, a hair tie in case he gets too hot and wants to get his hair off his neck. He waves Jacob away and follows him out of the apartment and into the steadily warming summer air. Jacob stops and watches him lock up, his eyes trailing up and down Staci's back without a care in the world.

Jacob's driving the same white SEED CONTRACTING truck that had been parked in Staci's mother's driveway. It's a few model years old, 2014 or 2015 maybe, Staci'd never been good at doing more than correctly naming the manufacturer. Chevrolet emblem on the front, Jacob's logo on the side. It's almost unnecessarily large, but if Jacob's actually hauling building materials in it it kind of makes sense.

At least Staci has firsthand knowledge that he's not overcompensating for anything.

He's got to physically pull himself up into the passenger seat, the damn thing is lifted so far off the ground. Staci rolls his eyes as he settles in and buckles up, but the thought of Jacob fucking him in the backseat and the shock absorbers squeaking as they rut? Yeah, it's kind of stupid arousing.

Seated on top of the dash is a Hardee's bag, the brown paper bag rolled tightly three fourths of the way down. After easily climbing inside his seat and putting on his own belt, Jacob wordlessly places the bag in Staci's lap.

“Didn't know if you'd eaten,” Jacob mumbles gruffly, as if he's embarrassed by what he's done. Like buying Staci breakfast and daring to speak about it is somehow more damning than the depraved shit he's done with Staci so far, the filth he's spewed into his ear that'd make a priest shrivel up and die.

Staci pops each and every hash brown bite into his mouth with glee.

They go ten minutes or so towards Polson without speaking. Staci eats his food and learns that Jacob drives like a fucking demon, and Jacob alternates between mindlessly fiddling with the radio knob and rapping his fingers against the steering wheel. Somehow it's more nerve wracking to be in a nonsexual situation with Jacob. He knows little else besides sexual things about the man he's traveling with, and the thought should worry him more than it does. Make him at least a little wary of letting his guard down, of becoming comfortable with a shark of a man like Jacob.

Maybe Staci's just a stupid God damn prey animal after all, because all he does is neatly place his balled up wrappers back into the bag, place the bag at his feet, and very loudly suck the grease off his fingertips. He thinks about what girls have done for him in the past that he'd liked, as well as what he's seen in porn both gay and straight, and sets about immitating it. Hollowing his cheeks as he sucks and pulls off, swirling his tongue around his knuckles like it's the shaft of a dick.

His methods get the job done if the whiteness of Jacob's flexing knuckles against the steering wheel is any indication.

“Staci,” Jacob hisses.

His left index finger pops loudly when he releases it, shining wetly in the morning sun coming in from behind them.

“Hm?” Staci asks breezily. Playing dumb Staci can do. Bat his eyelashes nice and pretty. It's worked on countless women in the county and aided him on the beat, got him laid in college more times than he can remember. Jacob isn't even fully looking at him and he can tell that it's working. There's a tick in his jaw, jump jump jumping as the speedometer begins to creep well above the 5MPH over that's easily forgiven.

“Keep playing with me, see what happens.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No, Officer, s'a fucking promise.”

-

Staci gets his just desserts in the fucking deck stain aisle, because of course he does.

After meandering through the aisles with lumber, Jacob ordering what they needed and having the employees cart it to and fro for payment, Jacob hooks his index finger beneath Staci's remaining bracelet and urges him further into the warehouse.

It startles Staci how easily and readily Jacob touches him in public, uncaring of any of the looks it may or may not garner them. Secure in himself and ready to take any criticism received and let it wash cleanly off his back.

What the fuck is anyone gonna say, anyway? Who wants to call a 6'3” brick shithouse a faggot and see how many teeth they can swallow before 8AM?

Staci's so distracted by how he admires Jacob's self confidence that he doesn't recognize the scenery shifting, becoming more familiar. Before he knows it he's being dragged down a sharp left corner and positioned in front of Jacob, the wall of _fucking brown_ front and center, looming and unhelpful as always.

Behind him, Jacob presses his body snugly against Staci's back. The few inches difference in their heights means Jacob's groin sits further up his ass than Staci's would on him. There's too many layers of clothing between them for him to actually feel anything, but that doesn't stop him from imagining it.

“Remember which one you bought that first day?” Jacob asks quietly. All of the hairs on the back of Staci's neck begin to rise. “Didn't buy enough to cover this new, bigger deck, let alone that old one. Gonna have to pick up s'more.”

Staci doesn't remember which one he'd grabbed. He'd been so frazzled, so ready to get out of there, and they're all fucking brown anyway.

“Does it matter? Can't you just – just buy enough of a new color?” Staci says back. When Jacob tuts his tongue at him, Staci bristles. Takes a small step forward to escape the wall of heat at his back, only to have it easily slip forward right where it had been. “Jacob, we're in public.”

“Unclench, baby. There's no one else here this early but us, a handful of employees, and a couple half-asleep contractors.” Jacob guides Staci's right hand upward. Staci allows it to happen, even extends his fingers like he thinks Jacob might want him to. He's rewarded with a purred _good boy_ as Jacob drags his fingertips along the sales information of the vats of stain. “Plus, don't you get off on the exhibitionist shit? Know it gets you hard.”

“Not – not in the middle of a fucking _aisle in a store_ , Jacob.”

“Then where, _sweetheart_? The bathroom again? The parking lot? Hm, we need a new bingo number, though. Wanna come look at some flowers? For an extra fee, I can be contracted to, uh. Plant seed at your mother's house.”

“You're the Devil incarnate, I swear to God. This is payback for missing Mass all those times.”

“Better stop, gonna give me ideas. Always wanted to suck dick in a confessional booth while someone listened in.”

He's going to Hell in a very, very spectacular way.

Still, when Jacob slips his finger back beneath his bracelet and begins leading him towards the garden section, Staci doesn't even falter.

It's even hotter outside now than it had been when they'd left his apartment an hour ago. Muggier, too, aided by the extra moisture in the air from recently watered plants. A third or so of the gardening section is roofed, multiple huge metal ceiling fans churning overheard, but not fully walled off. Left open on one side. It opens up into a fully outdoor space dotted here and there with the skeletal, metal bones of greenhouses. Staci suspects they're left bare during the spring and summer months to allow the plants to get the most sun possible, while during the fall and winter they're covered with tarp or plastic siding to insulate from the bitter Montana cold.

It's so _colorful_ out here. Bright flashes of pink and white and yellow among a sea of vibrant green. He can smell the flowers even from the entryway, where the outdoor furniture and decorative rock formations are stored. The scent's tinged with chemicals and the harshness of new furniture, but he can still easily make out their sweetness over the bitter tang.

With this new deck being built his mother'll probably decide to try her hand at gardening again. Line the bottom walls in sweet smelling flowers and rich, dark mulch. And by _her hand_ Staci means she'll pull the eye batting trick and get Staci to do it. So he probably should look at the flowers. Get himself familiar with the area.

Jacob leads him down one of the tight, tall rows of metal shelving filled to the brim with bagged soil, halfway into the heart of the partially enclosed section. It's almost claustrophobically close between the bagged soil and opposing wall of bagged mulch, barely enough room for two grown men to stand front to back. It's made even hotter by the sunlight leeching in through the floor-to-ceiling expanse of frosted, slightly see-through glass endcapping the aisle.

Jacob pops his finger quickly out from beneath Staci's bracelet, gives it _just_ enough time for the bead to solidly smack Staci's wrist, and then he's pushing him backward against unforgiving steel. It digs into the center of Staci's back in multiple places, but the irritation and pain is quickly forgotten as Jacob descends on his mouth again.

It takes him a few heartbeats and a solid squeeze to his crotch for the thought of cameras to even trickle into Staci's lust drenched mind. He flails his arms at his sides and hisses that the coast might not be clear when Jacob breaks away with a grunt, and that even if there isn't anyone around and they're out of sight of the nearby cameras, there's always the risk that there's one they can't see with an indirect view of Jacob squeezing his crotch and rolling his hips into Staci's thigh.

“There's no one out here but us and the plants,” Jacob says. “Do you hear anyone else, Peaches?”

Staci strains a little over the rush of blood in his ears, but doesn't hear any other voices. Just the singing of nearby birds, possibly up in the roofing. That could just mean the person perusing the aisle two back behind them is doing so quietly. Even though he knows it's gonna earn him an eye roll, he points that out to Jacob.

Right on cue, Jacob rolls his eyes—but for dramatic effect he presses the heel of his palm hard into Staci's stupidly hardening dick, and drags it upward to Staci's belt buckle.

“Then I suggest you be quick, and you be quiet. Same rules as before, huh?” Jacob whispers conspiratorially, fingertips tapping against the seam of the zipper. His teeth click together in a grin as the teeth of Staci's fly are steadily pulled apart. With his belt buckle still on and his button fastened there's not much room for a hand to fit comfortably, let alone Jacob's giant paw, but he endures the zipper teeth biting into his skin, leaving behind little raised lines of pink irritation, as he secures his prize.

Staci's knees buckle a little. He's got to throw a hand out and squeeze his fingers tight around the metal shelving at his back to stabilize himself.

“Half of not getting pegged as suspicious is not _acting_ suspicious, Staci. Don't act like my hand's wrapped around your dick and people'll be hard pressed to look past the surface level.” It's cruel how even his voice is, how conversational, like he's doing something inane like walking Staci through the differences between this brand of soil and the one closer to the endcap.

Staci spread his legs a little wider so Jacob has more room to move his fist inside Staci's stupidly tight jeans, and tries his best not to look like he's actively receiving a handjob.

After a few tugs of his dick within the confines of his jeans, Jacob gingerly pulls him out the open fly, mindful of the zipper teeth. Jacob's body blocking the view of the fucked up tableau they make from the main aisle, how considerate of him.

As it is, Staci's embarrassingly hard from a few dirty words and the threat of detection literally around every corner. He's never really considered himself an exhibitionist or someone who got off on risk, but before Jacob and their scene in the bathroom that first time, Staci hadn't even been willing to think of himself as queer. Maybe there's a lot of stuff about himself that he's been repressing all this time.

“See, Peaches? The nice lady who just walked by us had no idea you're fucking my fist. Even smiled at me all sweet.”

“What?” Staci squeaks. He grips hard at Jacob's wrist but does nothing to still his hand.

“Just let it happen. Feels good, right? Bet you miss my mouth, though, just like it misses your dick.”

He lets Jacob's filthy words wash over him as he minutely works his hips forward. The best course of action is to get this over with as quickly as possible—enjoy it, yes, but don't prolong it. Don't tempt fate. Let the slickness of his own dribbling precome get Jacob's fist slick enough to really get some traction going. They can have messier, drawn out fun some other time, when they're not inside an Establishment.

He works on his breathing. Bites his lips to the point of pain and draws heavy, greedy lungfuls of air in through his nose. He's probably making more noise this way, huffing like an irritated bull, but it's better than the alternative.

“Gonna reacquaint them real soon, promise. My mouth, your cock—mmm, then your asshole, my cock. Make that introduction nice and informal this time. Mommy dearest's gonna be gone—”

“Shut _up_ , Jacob. Shut. Up.”

“—all day, isn't that right? Plenty of time to get some work done and then get some dick done, don't you think?”

Staci groans quietly, half pissed of and wholly aroused.

It doesn't take much longer for him to come. He manages to keep his moans muffled, but Staci makes no effort to direct or control where he shoots. If Jacob's gonna be coming all over him and staining his clothes where Staci's fucking _mother_ can see, Staci's gonna let the pieces fall where they may and just let Jacob deal with it.

The bastard manages to escape semen stains entirely. Most of Staci's release wetly hits the floor, pattering down at their feet. A stripe or two lands on the jut of Jacob's wrist—and after Jacob carefully tucks Staci back in his jeans, shushing him as Staci hisses in sensitivity, he holds Staci's gaze and purposefully licks the evidence away.

When his hand's clean, Staci shifts his eyes down, down, down, to where Jacob's still hard. His pants aren't as tight as Staci's and his shirt is a good bit longer, so his erection isn't anywhere near as noticeable as Staci's would've been.

He's not brave enough to reciprocate out here in the open, but reciprocate he does intend to do.

“You've got a choice,” Staci says shakily, “bathroom or truck.”

A familiar grip curls beneath Staci's bracelet, but instead of tucking just around the beads Jacob secures his hand around Staci's wrist.

“Truck. I pick truck. We'll just have to come back and pick up our shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm SORRY home depot. truly, i am. defiling all of your spaces.
> 
> sorry this took a lil bit, but!!! it's pretty long so hopefully that makes up for it :-) it was also edited later so any typos i will catch tomorrow on my read through, when my eyelids aren't lead weights ugh
> 
> also i guess i have lil reoccuring things through my j/s fics that i just...keep putting out there? the finger sucking bit was in darkness (in a car, too!) and i didn't even realize it was a similar scene until i editing at 3:30am like i am not, going WAIT A GD MINUTE. i like it, though. like threads of congruency throughout my depraved lil stories.


	5. Chapter 5

The few employees on the sales floor nearest the exit probably all stare at them as Jacob briskly marches them outside, dragging Staci stumbling and grinning sheepishly behind him, but Staci barely notices. He should be mortified by having people see him like this, tripping over his own two feet like a puppy running after its master, but as usual with things involving Jacob Seed his brain stalls as soon as he’s entered into the equation.

He’s had sex with Jacob in this Home Depot twice now, two and a half times if you count phone sex with Jacob coming all over himself and the steering wheel of the truck Staci’s about to do...something in.

He’s let Jacob fuck up against him within earshot of Staci’s mother, while a tiny depiction of Jesus looked on disapprovingly.

Staci’s brain outright strokes out whenever Jacob’s involved. Leaves him under the careless tutelage of his fucking dick, which is stupid and more than eager to be led down into the muck so long as Jacob comes along for the ride.

Before he knows it they’re at the truck. Staci’s not sure if they’re just going to hop in the backseat now or what, fuck around beside the compact parked on their right, so he waits for Jacob to give him his cue. He wriggles his wrist in Jacob’s hold, watching him as he breathes hard and fights his own jean pocket to retrieve his keys.

“Gonna move the car to the backend of the lot,” Jacob mumbles. “Field on one side and loading dock on the other. Clear coast in case you get stage fright.”

The jerking of his shoulder as he roots around in his pocket has the hand still wrapped around Staci’s wrist jerking him forward until Staci’s pressed against Jacob’s side. Widening his stance a little so the side of Jacob’s leg is between his own. Staci’s no longer hard but _God_ Jacob feels good pressed again him. Smells good, too, bar soap and deodorant from a morning shower. Sweat over top of that from working his arm to get Staci off in the muggy outdoor section.

It would be easy to just...let himself get lost in this some more. Hotboxed in Jacob’s scent in the cab of the truck, windows up and fogged, damp with their panting. He could probably work himself up again in thirty or so minutes if he really tried for it. He’s still got that pleasant heaviness low in his gut from orgasm, still loose and languid and aroused. He might not even need that long if he stays turned on like this.

Just need a little push.

It wouldn’t be difficult to drag this out with Jacob a little longer, edge him a bit so Staci can get hard again. He probably wouldn’t even mind, would probably let Staci sit in his lap and roll his hips into him as long as he needed. Flattered by the fact that Staci’s so hot for him he’s rearing to come as many times as possible.

“You’re so considerate,” Staci says, batting his eyelashes as Jacob looks sharply over his shoulder at him. His words intentionally pointed, saccharine sweet. Bratty, like he wants to entice Jacob into dropping that half-assed attempt at chivalry in a relationship that only requires a half-assed attempt at discretion, and just demand Staci blow him right here right now, where anyone could see.

The hand around his wrist flexes its grip, a gentle warning to the tune of muffled, jingling keys. “S’fine, s’fine. Keep on, Stace. Gonna remind you of this moment when I’m not so considerate.”

Staci’s just about to ask him to explain, to goad him into switching gears early, when Jacob finally makes purchase on his keys and practically rips them out of his pocket.

“Get in the backseat, Peaches. No sense in both of us having to get out again,” Jacob says.

He’d blow him in the front seat if Jacob asked, but Staci’s got to admit that being in the backseat is probably better, easier. It’ll give him more access to all of Jacob, unfettered by cupholders and gear shifters and whatever the fuck else.  The front seat is tight, divided between driver and passenger, and even if Jacob pushes the seat back and lets Staci climb astride him, there’ll still be the steering wheel in his spine.

God, the horn, too. Staci getting excited and careless rolling his hips into Jacob only to lean back and declare to the entire parking lot what they’re doing. Make some little old early bird drop their paint can out of fright.

Backseat it is. There he’ll have the ability to climb into Jacob’s lap, to touch all of him, with as much space as the extended crew cab can afford two grown men.

After unlocking the door, Jacob holds it open and watches as Staci hauls himself inside. Still as a stone, eyes greedily taking Staci in as he situaties himself all the way on the other side of the bench seat, rubbing a sweaty hand across the top of his thigh.

Watching, watching, watching, as Staci catches his gaze and slowly drags his hand over his crotch and up his abdomen, pushing his shirt up as he goes.

“Y’gonna get a move on any day now, Jacob?” Staci asks, aiming for bratty again, but the tone switches gears in his throat of its own accord. Utterly wrecked and altered by the arousal still floating in his bloodstream, it comes out breathy and wanting.

With more force than strictly necessary, Jacob slams the door shut. The sound of metal hitting metal makes Staci flinch, and for a moment he feels bad about Jacob’s truck taking a beating. But then Jacob’s quickly throwing himself into the driver’s seat and starting the car, and he just feels proud. _Powerful._ Leading a man like Jacob Seed around by the dick.

It takes less than two minutes for Jacob to haul ass around the warehouse. The field Jacob mentioned is flush with cornstalks still coming into their own. Staci watches the breeze skirt over them, making them dance and sway, as Jacob throws the truck into park at the far edge of the parking lot, where it’s less asphalt and more grass.

There’s a long, booted leg climbing over the divider before Jacob even tells him heads up.

Staci laughs as Jacob slowly brings his bulk from the front half of the cab into the back. It’s not graceful at all, Jacob’s entirely too fucking big to be doing this, but Staci’s flattered Jacob wanted him so badly he didn’t even want to fuck with _doors_.

It would’ve been more time efficient for him to use them, though.

There’s a lot of Jacob to get through that tiny little space, and once through it he has to rearrange himself so he’s sitting on his ass, and not facing the truckbed.

After a few more moments of maneuvering, the truck shimmying under his ministrations, Staci still quietly laughing with his cheeks warm and lower lip caught between his teeth, Jacob’s finally seated in the center of the bench. A little winded from all the twisting and turning, but grinning stupidly, triumphantly.

“Well, that was -”

“Fucking stupid was what it was.”

“Y’gonna be a little bitch or y’gonna come here, Stace? Yeah, s’what I thought.”

Already moving before Jacob’s finished speaking, Staci hits him lightly in the shoulder as he climbs into his lap. Can’t be mad at him for running that mouth when it drives Staci as crazy as it does, but _damn_ is there an off button somewhere Staci hasn’t seen?

Maybe a sliding scale to take him down from 11 and let him rest somewhere like...8.

Even being slightly smaller than Jacob and the backseat being more spacious than the front, it’s still a tight fit. He’s got to be careful not to brain himself on the ceiling or knee Jacob in the nuts as he positions his legs. In the end they find themselves tucked on either side of Jacob’s waist, spread to the point of almost-pain, but the warmth of Jacob’s thighs beneath him, and Jacob’s crotch against his own distracts him enough that it’s bearable. Makes it worth it to be able to rock his hips forward into Jacob’s, hear him hiss around his grinned white teeth.

“Well hello there, little darlin’,” Jacob whispers against his temple, both hands braced on Staci’s ass and squeezing in time with the push-roll of Jacob’s hips. The subtle movement in and of itself is enough to get the truck rocking along with them, and Staci grins at the thought of Jacob’s big shit truck sticking out like a sore thumb against the cornfield, rocking slowly, noticeably, damningly, even as he scowls at yet _another_ nickname. Cute as it might fucking be.

There’s no time to mock him, to tell him to shut up, that he could’ve had Staci in his lap an hour ago if he’d taken Staci’s invitation in his apartment, when Jacob gently nudges his nose with Jacob’s own, and brings their mouths together in a kiss far sweeter than Staci’s expecting. It startles him, Jacob’s hands still roughly pawing at his ass while Jacob’s mouth languidly presses against Staci’s. Gentle, coaxing Staci’s lips into a rhythm he falls into easily. He’s rewarded with Jacob’s pleased rumbling and Jacob’s wicked tongue easily parting his lips and slipping inside.

Jacob’s hands have begun to migrate, his right slipping up Staci’s back, beneath his shirt, until it stops on Staci’s left shoulder. Urging Staci forward into their kiss, holding him in a partial embrace. Jacob’s heart beating slowly but heavily against Staci’s chest, while Staci’s own thunders. Boils from the arousal-hot blood coursing through it.

The left slips further down Staci’s ass, grips him low between his cheeks as Jacob fucks his hips hard into Staci. The contrast between his kisses and thrusting has Staci groaning against his mouth, hand scrambling against Jacob’s chest for stability. As soon as they settle draped behind Jacob’s neck, they’re moving again, shakily tearing at Jacob’s shirt. Gotta get it up and out of the way, get them skin to skin.

They break for air as Staci’s hands change their course again, sticking a pin in the whole shirt thing in favor of getting Jacob’s jeans open. Staci pants against Jacob’s shoulder as he watches his own hands frantically attack Jacob’s belt clasp. So eager they shake, tripping over themselves in their fervor.

“Staci. Baby, baby, s’okay, not goin’ anywhere. Not gonna keep you from what you need,” Jacob says, pressing kisses in Staci’s curls. His hands find Staci’s and steadily lead him through pulling the leather open just enough to expose Jacob’s jean button and fly.

“Want it,” Staci hisses. “Shoulda - shoulda given it to me back at my place. Against the wall, or - or on my couch.” He knocks Jacob’s hands out of the way, determined to retrieve his prize himself. His own are stabler now, like just Jacob’s touch was enough to calm them. It only takes two attempts to free the button of its holder, and no effort at all to bring the zipper down. Red blooming from the opening as Staci begins to urge Jacob’s blue jeans down.

Jacob shifts his hips back and up as Staci maneuvers them down enough to get Jacob’s cock and balls out. Presses another kiss to Staci’s hair as he makes a small, triumphant sound and wraps his right hand around Jacob’s already damp cockhead.

“Gonna fuck you in a bed the first time,” Jacob tells him.

Staci’s still watching his hands, admiring how they look against the ruddy heft of Jacob’s dick, but he can practically feel Jacob’s eyes on him. Smoldering, a gaze that gets so fucking hot it’s more akin to freezing than burning.

“I have a bed at my apartment. Y’know, where I live.” He rolls his eyes, almost wishing Jacob would stop talking. Let him focus on the task at hand, literally, without melting his brain with the filth Jacob’s always got on tap.

In retaliation, Jacob fucks his hips into Staci’s fist particularly hard. It has the truck rocking even harder, has Staci’s free hand flying up to grab Jacob’s shoulder so he’s not unseated. Thrown to the floor like Jacob’s a fucking bull or something.

There’s no squealing shock absorbers, though. Must be new, or just well maintained. Pity. They’ll just have to try harder.

“But where’s the fun in that?” Jacob asks. His hand leaves Staci’s shoulder to come up to his neck. Fingertips pressing into the side of his throat, Jacob coaxes Staci’s forehead off his shoulder. Their eyes meet and the breath stutters in Staci’s throat. Jacob looks like he wants to fucking eat him, teeth bared and eyes wild with lust. His pupils blown so wide Staci can see himself in all that black. “Plenty of fun, I guess. But that’s not where I want you the first time.”

Staci could play dumb. Assume Jacob means he wants him back in Jacob’s own bed, with his own creature comforts and personal stash of toys and tricks. But the much more likely option, glaringly bright like hellfire, is that Jacob wants to fuck him in his mother’s house, in his childhood bed.

Staci should be disgusted by how much that turns him on. That familiar room forever marked with the memory of a man like Jacob literally fucking him into the mattress, crosses shaking in the hall as Staci’s headboard collides with the wall.

God, the wall that separates Staci’s room from his mother’s. Maybe she’ll go in there later and find the things mounted on the wall between their rooms shifted just a little bit forward. Christ, maybe some of the stuff’ll fall down onto her bed.

She’ll think an earthquake or something happened. Has to be the only thing to explain it, certainly can’t be Jacob Seed of SEED CONTRACTING fucking the daylights out of her son.

He’ll never be able to stay in there again without thinking about it, without pressing his face into the pillows and desperately hoping Jacob’s scent is still there. It’ll be the only sexual memory that mattress has seeped into it besides ones of Staci with just his hand for company.

Just Jacob, only Jacob.

“Y’gonna let me, Peaches?” His face’s dipped forward, nose knocking into Staci’s again. Their next kiss is brief, just a simple press of lip to lip. Jacob chases it with a bite, teeth bright and sharp in Staci’s lower lip. “Let me do whatever I want to you, ain’t that right?”

Staci nods his head so hard he nearly clocks them both in his fervor. It makes him a little dizzy, his head spinning in counterpoint to how Jacob always throws him out of balance, off-kilter and so turned on he’s stupid with it.

“So eager for it. Hard to believe you’ve never done this shit with a man before. Y’pullin’ my leg, Staci, or are you just a natural cockslut? Some kinda savant, got a knack for dick. Meant to have it in your mouth or in that ass of yours, rearranging your guts. Just had to wake it up in you.”

He wants to know what it feels like, to be shoved full of dick and forced to take it. Even with as rough as Jacob can be, he thinks he’d be gentle the first few times. Give Staci enough sweetness to string him along before ramping it up and giving him all he’s got.

Maybe even rim him? That’s popular in gay porn. Staci’s never had it tried on him before, but he has done it to his female partners a few times. Those that let him seemed to enjoy it, though not as much as having his tongue in their cunt.

They look like they enjoy it in porn, though. Faces turned sideways on their pillow so none of their moaning is muffled as they lightly push their hips back, encouraging their partner to crowd in as close as they can to press saliva-wet fingers in alongside the tips of their tongue.

Staci might...might like that. Jacob looks like he’d be good at it, too, with those full lips and that devil may care attitude. The way he’s always flapping those gums, oughta know how to properly put that mouth to use.

He’d probably keep at it until Staci begged him to stop, sloppy and wet and desperate to come. Then slide home inside, have Staci howling anew.

“Wanna wake it up in you, Staci,” Jacob breathes, an odd touch of reverence in his voice. “God, take all of those little firsts, tuck ‘em in my pocket. Never let you fuck another man without thinkin’ of me first.”

“Want it,” Staci says again, whispering his words against Jacob’s mouth. “Keep saying you’re gonna take care of me. Put me in my place. S’all that talk, Jacob?”

The positioning of his arm makes the angle a little awkward, but Jacob grabs a fistful of Staci’s hair and clenches his fingers in it, close to the root so the burn is more aching than stinging.

“All things in due time. Can’t rush shit like this,” Jacob chastises.

“But I want it _now_.” He’s rocking his hips into Jacob’s as he jerks him off, the lone bracelet on his wrist quietly clacking its beads together as he moves. The thought strikes him that he hasn’t seen its mate on Jacob’s wrist today. He hadn’t the presence of mind to keep an eye out for it earlier, and now with Jacob’s dick literally in his hands Staci might forget again, but he wants to bring it up. Inquire about its whereabouts.

Make Jacob wear it all the time, even if its presence attracts attention. A mark of ownership, like the ones fading on Staci’s throat.

“I can give you somethin’ to tide you over,” Jacob rumbles. He nips Staci’s lower lip again. Presses forward right after to kiss away the sting. “Occupy that fussy fuckin’ mouth of yours.”

Staci’s face goes hot. He shifts in his seat atop Jacob’s lap, still steadily working his hand. He wants to try with his mouth, but he’s never done that before. God, he doesn’t want to look fucking stupid down there on his knees. Doesn’t think he could stand to have Jacob poke fun at him in a situation like that.

“Hey. Hey, hey, hey. Y’don’t gotta. I’m happy just like this.” Even with his hips still fucking into Staci’s grip, the words are genuine, earnest. As much as he plays at aggression and force, Jacob seems like he’d let Staci go at his own speed. Nudge him in a few new directions, but by and large let Staci control what they do, and when they do it. And most importantly: back off if Staci asked.

He doesn’t know Jacob very well at all, and he certainly shouldn’t trust him, but the tension that’s filled at the suggestion leaves him as quickly as it came. The apprehension is still there, but it’s tempered by Staci’s arousal and eagerness to please.  “I’ve, uh. Never done... _that_ before, either. If you promise not to laugh -”

“God, baby. Won’t laugh at you. Too busy trying not to fucking bust early watching those pretty lips wrap around my dick to do any of that shit. Know you’ve never done this before, not expecting you to be a pro.”

The constant pet names and compliments are really starting to get to Staci. He can feel them gently boosting his confidence, nudging him forward into unmapped territory. It steels his resolve, has him shimmying off Jacob’s lap as eloquently as possible and onto the floor.

He finds himself between Jacob’s parting legs, seated on the hump in the foot well between window seats. It’s not an altogether unfamiliar position, but it’s the first time he’s gotten down on his knees to find a dick erect in his face. It looks larger from this angle, more daunting, and Staci worries for a moment that he’s gonna be able to fit even less than he thought in his mouth.

God, how he wishes he’d had this sexual revelation in college so he could practice and get good. Really blow Jacob’s mind, suck it right out of his dick.

Idly, Jacob strokes himself with one hand and pets Staci’s hair with the other. He hums when Staci gets closer to where his hand’s steadily moving. Lets his cockhead rub against Staci’s lips, warm and damp and slightly bitter.

“Pretty as a fuckin’ picture,” Jacob tells him, dragging his cockhead along Staci’s lips again until they glisten with it. He swears he can feel precome bead out of the tip, decides to chase it with his tongue. Dip the tip into the hole and swirl it gently, Jacob stopping his pass to let it happen. The harsh exhale he gives makes Staci’s chest ache with confidence. “Just...do what feels natural. Not expecting you to go crazy, baby. Don’t need to fuck your face, don’t need you to deepthroat.”

His hand is at least steady when he gently pushes Jacob’s away. He jerks him a few times, enough to encourage another bead of precome to weep from the tip, before Staci takes a deep breath and leans in to collect it from the source.

The taste of dick is wildly different than that of pussy. Salty, bitter against his taste buds as he circles the head of Jacob’s cock with the flat of his tongue, trying to get it wet. Musky, but not in the same way a wet cunt is. There’s something masculine and hard to describe about the way it tastes.

Having weight in his mouth instead of against it is new, too. There’s so much to _do_ in order to make room for dick, he’s got to tuck his lips over his teeth and mind his gag reflex as he goes. As he sucks along the tip, steadily letting himself take a little more in as he experimentally tries to bob his head, he wonders how long it’ll take him to be _good_ at this. Not some fumbling novice who keeps nearly gagging when Jacob’s cockhead brushes against the back wall of his throat.

Staci wants to make this good, even if he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Thinking about former conquests and fucking porn, he hollows his cheeks as he takes in as much of Jacob as he can, trying to sync the suction of his mouth with the corkscrewing of his hand at the base of Jacob’s dick.

It’s not a lot, maybe two or three inches before Staci’s swallowing heavily, trying not to gag for real, but Jacob seems to be appreciating his efforts. He keeps petting Staci’s hair and rumbling little words of encouragement to him. His hips are dutifully stilled, letting Staci set the pace like he’d thought. Not pushing, not forcing, just enjoying.

The taste of precome occasionally flaring brightly across Staci’s tongue lets him know he’s at least not fucking this up.

He gets a little ahead of himself after a few minutes of steady, successful head bobbing. He takes as much of Jacob into his mouth as he can, and then some, until cockhead is pressing against the opening of his throat and he’s swallowing convulsively around it.

Before he can cough and bite Jacob, Staci pulls off quickly. His cheeks flare hotly as he presses his face to Jacob’s thigh and coughs. Watches his hand still striping Jacob’s dick so he doesn’t have to look up at his face.

He’s not safe from those eyes for long. Jacob lifts his thigh and rolls it inward so Staci’s looking at him again. With more kindness in his eyes than Staci had expected him to be capable of, he sweeps his thumb over Staci’s already swollen lips and gives him smile. More toned down than his usual shark grins, private and genuine and all for Staci fucking Pratt.

“Doin’ so good, Peaches. God, watching you go...gotta try real hard to keep myself still.” His thumb makes another pass along Staci’s lower lip. He grins when Staci nips at it before drawing it inside, laving his tongue around its whirled pad, but it’s still a softer expression than Staci’s used to.

He already kind of misses the weight, the unfamiliar warmth of Jacob’s dick in his mouth.

“Wanna try again?” Staci nods. Sucks hard on Jacob’s thumb, purposefully dragging his teeth along it. “Good boy. Gonna open wide for me?”

In the backseat of his truck in the Home Depot backlot, Jacob carefully removes his thumb and feeds Staci his dick.

He takes in more off the bat than he had previously. Each dip of his head without incidence spurs him on further, urges him to experiment with this. The first time might not be the greatest situation for experimentation, but _Jacob_ seems like the person to do it with.

It’s not trust, Staci reminds himself, but it’s something close.

He plays around with his sucking techniques, on whether to suck hard when pulling up or to try to do it on the way down. On the way down turns out to be a little counterproductive to the descent of his mouth, but swirling his tongue in tandem with his corkscrewing hand seems to be a winning combination.

Jacob grunts above him. Spread his legs a little wider, forcing Staci to shimmy forward to keep his mouthful properly seated between his lips.

“Look at you go, Peaches. Fuck. Don’t know what you do to me.”

Staci moans, high and reedy even with his mouth otherwise occupied. With the hand not working alongside his mouth, Staci opens his own jeans to get at himself. He’s not fully hard yet, but with a few encouraging tugs he knows he’ll be there shortly.

It’s strange, trying to match the movement of the hand on Jacob’s dick with the one on his own. It takes him a time or two of starts and stops, losing the rhythm on one or jumping ahead to match too soon, Staci’s lips clumsily bumping into his over-eager hand around the base of Jacob’s dick, but after some trial and error Staci manages.

“Get you hot, Staci? God, I wanna see. C’mon, get up off the floor.”

Jacob’s cock pops from his mouth wetly as Jacob outright heaves him up by his armpits and into the seat behind the driver’s. Staci’s stunned by the sheer display of _strength_ , and he stares dumbly at Jacob for a few heartbeats while his brain catches up with what’s happened.

“Like...like this?” Staci asks, not quite sure where to go from here with his positioning.

He watches Jacob scoot towards the window seat behind the passenger’s, his left leg propped up along the back of the seats, right in the footwell.

God, his dick’s shiny with Staci’s saliva.

“C’mon, y’can lay down a little. Do it so I can watch you, huh?”

The angle is awkward, but Staci can manage it for Jacob. He’s curled partially over Jacob’s extended leg, back pulling with the way he’s turned. It renders his right arm less mobile, too, so he uses that one to brace his weight and hold Jacob’s dick steady.

“There y’go, Staci,” Jacob says quietly, pushing some of Staci’s hair back from his face when he takes Jacob in his mouth again. He pets the shell of Staci’s ear when he tucks a few unruly curls behind it, has Staci shivering and scooting forward so he can take more into his mouth. He’s got to admit, the change in angle allows him to control depth and how much he takes into his mouth with greater precision. “What a sight. You’re practically dripping already. But...if you manage to make me come without blowing your load first, I’ll suck you off after. Think you can make it?”

He wants it. God, that talented mouth on him again like in his mother’s bathroom.

Staci’s moving his free hand away from between his own legs when Jacob makes a disapproving clicking noise. “Gotta keep touching yourself, Staci. If you stop, you’ll just have to finish yourself later.”

He’ll have to keep his grip looser, lighter. Ghost it up his shaft instead of gripping tightly like he wants. The change in sensation has his hips jumping more, desperately seeking just that little bit of stimuli it’ll take to get that touch where it needs to be.

He’s going to last, though. Earn Jacob’s mouth back on him.

If Jacob ever comes, that is. His jaw’s starting to ache a little, unused to the motions he’s putting it in through. The fact that people do this all the time when drunk and whiskey dick is a factor blows his mind - it takes forever for him to come when he’s been drinking.

Staci sucks hard at the tip again, pointing his tongue and sweeping along the ridges at the base of Jacob’s cockhead. There’s the bright taste of precome on his tongue, but this time the amount seems greater, the taste lingering for longer. Hoping that means Jacob’s close, Staci does it again.

The breath Jacob draws in is hissed through his teeth. He shifts his hips beneath Staci’s mouth, still not pushing up, forcing Staci to take in more. The hand petting through his hair twitches, tapping his fingers against Staci’s skull.

“Gonna find out if you’re a swallower or a spitter soon,” Jacob laughs, “gonna have to see which one it is. Know you’re a natural though. I’ll be able to fuck that mouth in no time, won’t I?”

Precome is bitter but not totally horrible, but it’s drastically less volume than a full ejaculation. Staci’s not sure if he’ll swallow or spit, but he guesses he’ll decide when he gets there.

Again putting not-trust, almost-trust, in Jacob Seed, this time to tell him shortly before it happens so Staci’s prepared to choose.

It’s getting harder to keep touching himself without coming. His fingers are shaking, hips twitching upward, but still they dutifully curl and drag up, then down.

Coming before Jacob wouldn’t be the worst thing, but he wants. God, he wants.

Jacob groans low and in his throat. Pushes his hips up just a little, pressing his cockhead to the back of Staci’s throat. They’ve dropped before Staci can even register, saving him from anything more than a slight tickling irritance.

“Time to choose, baby. No wrong answer here, promise you. Gonna love it either way.”

Staci swallows.

A full mouthful of come is definitely stronger than precome, but Staci doesn’t give himself time to dwell on the taste. He swallows each shot as Jacob twitches in his mouth, determined to milk him through orgasm. Staci always liked when his partners kept on until he expressly told them to stop, and it seems Jacob’s the same way.

His groaning gets throatier the longer Staci continues to work, until Jacob’s pulling his hips _away_ from Staci, his cock sliding from Staci’s mouth.

“There y’go,” Jacob laughs, cheeks flushed from orgasm. He’s already moving towards Staci, ready to make good on his end of the deal. “Lean back for me, Stace. I’m not a spitter, either.”

-

Before they go back into the warehouse to actually pay for their items and haul them back to Hope County, Jacob throws a tin of Altoids at him with a snort.

“Can’t do much for the wet chin, but it’ll keep your breath from smelling entirely like jizz,” he laughs.

Staci pops two in his mouth, shows them proudly on the flat of his tongue before he’s pulling them inside. His lips are fucked out and tingly, but at least they match Jacob’s.

“Put ‘em back in the glovebox, will ya?”

When he pulls the handle to lower the compartment, Staci’s greeted with his other bracelet. He allows the mints to take their spot as he scoops it out, unsure what he plans to do with it. He could slip right back down his wrist like they never left, like Jacob’s never snatched it in the first place.

But then that means they won’t be on Jacob, and he’d kind of liked the idea of Jacob having them.

Why’s it in the glovebox, anyway? There’s nothing else in there besides the driver’s manual and a spare set of worker’s gloves. It’s not like it’s a trophy case for all of Jacob’s conquests, unless he cleans it out after a successful collection.

“Oh, shit. That’s where I put that,” Jacob mumbles. With deft fingers, Jacob pries it out of Staci’s hand and slips it down his left wrist.

“Why was it in there?” Staci asks, brow furrowed. Eyes locked on the beads, dark against Jacob’s pale wrist.

Jacob blinks at him slowly. “Took it off because I didn’t want it to break while I was working. Put it there for safe keeping and then forgot. Thought I’d, uh. Lost it. Was gonna...hm. Well, it’s back now.”

“Was gonna what, Jacob?” presses Staci. They’re back in the front lot, beside another pickup truck this time. They really should go back into the store, pick up their things and get a move on, but Staci _needs_ to know what Jacob had almost said.

Jacob’s internal dilemma plays across his face. Staci can see the urge to just say it warring with the need to keep things close to the vest, in the furrowing of Jacob’s brow and the way he purses his lips.

The urge to speak wins, surprisingly, but Jacob doesn’t make the revelation easy on him. He’s halfway out the car when he says, casually over his shoulder like it doesn’t mean anything, “I was gonna buy you another set. Similar, at least. Don’t need to now, I guess.”

-

It’s nearly ten o’clock by the time Jacob drops him off at his apartment so Staci can get his own car. He’s still got to grab his laundry and his uniform and haul them downstairs, but he’d prepared those last night for this exact reason.

“Y’comin’ right over?” Jacob asks. His tone’s uninterested, bland, but the way Jacob doesn’t look at him belies the true nature of his words. Jacob’s _hoping_ Staci’ll come around like he said he would, but playing at aloof.

It’s cute, if unnecessary. Staci knows he’s just as invested as he himself is.

“Miss me already, Seed?”

“Like a hole in the head, kid.”

Staci snorts. “I just need to put my shit in my car and I’ll be right behind you.”

-

Jacob’s already around back when Staci parks, but the worker Staci doesn’t know the name of is in the front, grabbing something from the other work truck. He waves as Staci unloads his backseat, and offers to help him lug it all inside.

“S’fine, I got it. But thanks,” Staci says. With his hip, he pops the back door shut. “My, uh. My name’s Staci, by the way. Don’t think we’ve been formally introduced.”

“Maybe not formally, but I know who you are, kid,” he laughs, scratching at the back of his head where messy black hair is already beginning to escape its bun. “Name’s Eli, though. Palmer.”

Figures he’d already known, he’s been there for Staci’s mother talking about him since the beginning. But the way he says it has Staci frowning, unsure of the hidden meaning in Eli’s words.

“Now, no need to be givin’ me the face,” Eli warns. He hoists himself up into the other truck’s bed and pulls open a toolbox built into the side lining. “S’not a bad thing.”

“Then what is it?” Staci asks. “What kind of _thing_ is it?”

“Just a Jacob thing, I suppose,” Eli answers. He hops down from the lowered hatch, a set of gloves in his hands.

Staci wants to say he could’ve just taken the set from Jacob’s glovebox, but that would involve saying Jacob’s name. He’s not sure why it’s important that he not say it, only that he needs to keeps his mouth shut.

“S’not a bad thing,” Eli says again, a little quieter. He smacks the gloves against the palm of his right hand, the fabric cracking against his skin. “Never quite seen him as taken as he is right now.”

The words leave him before Staci can swallow them down. “He do this...this often?”

Does he fuck client’s sons often? Or just clients in general? Staci’s not stupid enough to think this is just a one-off thing for Jacob, but what is this particular instance to him?

God, what is this to _Staci_? Snatched bracelets and sexual awakenings and Jacob in his thoughts at all hours.

“Like this? No.” He shifts his weight from foot to foot. Keeps looking over his shoulder like he’s worried that Jacob’ll just appear, and knowing the way Jacob just kind of showed up in Staci’s life the way he did, he just fucking might. “Reckon you’re special.”

 _Special_. Staci’s gut warms with the word. He can feel the heat spreading through his limbs, different from the arousal from earlier. This is heavier somehow, like his blood’s been replaced by sludge. He’s wholly aware of it pulsing through his veins.

“Would he...with my mom, if I’d -”

“No,” Eli says immediately. He looks at Staci almost imploringly, like he’s determined that Staci get his meaning, even if his words are obscured and roundabout. “Not even if you hadn’t been in the picture. He’s, ha...not interested."

Not interested, even if Staci hadn’t...so that means -

“Don’t look so surprised, kid. Know what y’all get up to.”

“Does he tell you?” Staci furiously whispers, the heat in his face flaring with anger, a whole different kind of warmth, and something closer to betrayal that he doesn’t want to look at too closely in the harsh light of day. It’s not like he expects Jacob to keep this a secret forever, but to already be telling his crew? Christ.

Passing this thing between them around the guys like it’s some collectible trading card, all of Staci’s shiny new firsts in holographic detail.

“He don’t need to, not with the way you two eye each other. Don’t know how your ma don’t know yet, that’s for sure. Just…” Eli sighs. Runs a hand through the back of his hair, making the bun shrink and shrink. “Think about this, okay? Long and hard. I’ve known Jacob for years and he - look. This ain’t my place. I know it, but Jacob’s my friend.”

“You’re not making any sense here.” Almost pleading with him to _make_ sense. To tell Staci what he needs to know and none of this other frivolous crap. Is he warning Staci? Or warning Staci off of doing something on the horizon?

“He’s my friend, and bless him but he’s got a hard ass head. Stubborn old bastard. Just…remember that, okay? For when he’s inevitably stupid.”

He turns on his heel quickly and begins his trek around the side of the house.

“Y’can’t just - just leave! Eli! Eli, what do you mean?” Staci hisses, heart thundering in his chest.

Eli waves his gloves over his shoulder. “You’ll figure it out, kid. I’ve got faith.”

“Stop calling me that!”

Eli’s muffled, confusing, stupid fucking laughter echoes in his head the entire way into the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> promise i'm not dead, just battling the hell out of my motivation, lol.


End file.
